


All the Useless Things -- Wilgefortis, year 1

by tin_girl



Series: All The Useless Things [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: ...probably, Angst, Art, Art Theft, Boarding School, Bullying, Coming of Age, Dark Academia, Drama, Epic Friendships, F/F, F/M, Girls Being Awesome, Heists, I mean very slow, Internalized Homophobia, Literary References, M/M, Moral Ambiguity, Philosophy, Romance, Slow Burn, So much angst, Sort Of, That's it, Underage Drinking, Underage Smoking, a forever of angst, all art is quite useless or is it, all the drama, also by slow burn, boys being stupid, but also to an extent indulgence of consumerism, critique of consumerism, elitism, everyone's gay and there's paintings, initially slow boarding school slice of life type of thing, later a dramatic art-world Robin Hood sort of story, so much drama, that will pay off!, that's the story, to hell with elitism, touch-starvation, very burn, warning for some homophobia later on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:22:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 22
Words: 78,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23463895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tin_girl/pseuds/tin_girl
Summary: Boy meets boy, boy fails to realize he loves boy, boy loses boy, or does he?A love story in three paintings.
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Series: All The Useless Things [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1790320
Comments: 225
Kudos: 59





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Now I will talk a lot. You can ignore me. Alright, so. This is my original story and it’s about art theft. Kind of. Eventually. Initially, it's just kids at a boarding school becoming friends and falling in love and being chaotic but the whole story will span ten years or so and will have theft and spies and romance eventually, I promise. And angst (all the angst) and blood and dramatic kisses, you know, all the good stuff. 
> 
> Anyway, I feel a bit guilty about posting this here since it’s not a fanfic, but if you said it’s actually my fanfic of fine art, you wouldn’t be exaggerating. I’ve never enjoyed writing anything as much as I’m enjoying writing this because I can scroll through art for three hours and call it research. So it’s technically not a fanfic, but I sure fangirl a lot in it. 
> 
> Also, this is going to be a very frustrating story, and it won’t have much action (definitely not initially, at least) but if you like slow character studies, you might like it from the start, and if you like gay people being drama queens, you might like it a bit later, but if you do read it and like it (or not!) please consider leaving a comment because I live for them, even if they’re a jumble of letters, and because nothing motivates as much as a proof that someone wants to know what happens next. There’s that cheesy quote, you know, “I can’t write without a reader. It’s precisely like a kiss—you can’t do it alone.” 
> 
> Now, I love this story to pieces, and would probably write it even if no one was ever going to read it, but I don’t want to. 
> 
> And I'm shit at describing plot but the whole story is about a boy named Aubrey (warning: every character has a ridiculous name and Aubrey is actually fairly normal in comparison to some of the others, because I’m stupid) goes to a weird boarding school that hasn't been open for long because he’s an art nerd, and the school is owned by art collectors (sort of(. He takes a train there and it’s all very Hogwartsy at first, because I think when I first thought of the idea for the story it was meant to be some hp-based fanfic? It’s not now, no magic, no Hogwarts, but there is the train and all that. So the boy goes to that school and stuff happens. You’ll know soon enough. All I can say is that it has all my favourite things, which is to say art, spies, thieves, an obscene amount of jumpers, pretentious philosophical conversations, angst, aaand everyone is gay. Also it’s set in the 90s, in England, and I’m trying very hard not to get British and American English mixed-up but can’t promise I won’t every now and then. It’s already a wonder I’m writing in English in the first place, so. 
> 
> If you came here from my fanfic, this will probably be a little less fragmentary and chaotic than my usual stuff, since the mc himself is less chaotic than the people I usually write. He might seem a bit passive at first but you know, character development is hopefully something that will happen. 
> 
> If someone does end up reading it, and it’s confusing, ask away, also I can provide character descriptions/pinterest boards/maybe even rough sketches if that helps. 
> 
> Anyway, I’m so excited about this story and love it so much and have all this time to actually write it because quarantine, and just jkadefzjkdhf. Please, consider giving it a chance?
> 
> Oh, every chapter will have a quote and the name of a painting that it makes me think of :)) You can, of course, ignore it.

Wilhelm List, _Judith and Holofernes_

*

Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it.

~David Foster Wallace

*

He notes that she never takes off her gloves when she visits, not even when they sit down to drink Earl Grey. Once, a drop of milk spilled on the fabric, and she sucked on the spot, absent-minded. When she remembered herself and caught him looking, she smiled at him instead of apologising.

Sometimes, he wonders if they’d be friends if they weren’t both in love with the same paintings.

“I know what you’re doing,” he’ll tell her every time he finds her on his doorstep with a bouquet of flowers in her hands. “Don’t think I don’t.”

She’ll always pretend not to know what he means, and will tell him to put the chrysanthemums in a vase. She’ll smile so sweet that for a moment he’ll forget they’re funeral flowers.

He knows that _Apollo the Lute Player_ broke her heart more than any of the other paintings, and he tries to be humble about it all, always inviting her for tea in The Blue Room.

Every time, without fail, she grabs the china and goes to The Green Room instead, heels clicking in the hallway like punctuated syllables of elaborate insults.

“If you know what I’m doing,” she told him once, eyes too big like her face never grew out childhood, “ _let me_.”

When she first offered to sell him Apollo, he took a gun out of the top drawer of his cabinet. She arched an eyebrow, said, my, my, and didn’t believe he would shoot her for a second, which was just as well, because he’d never intended to. Instead, he showed her that the gun was loaded and then stood behind her and brought her arm up like she was a mannequin in a shop window that needed adjusting. She let him manhandle her, and they both knew that if she said one word, he’d have to step away, but she never said a thing.

He curled her fingers around the gun, one by one, and then made her put the muzzle to his temple, and placed her index finger on the trigger.

With his other hand, he checked her pulse.

“That’s insulting,” she said, her carotid artery pulsing, quick. He smiled, and knew that she wouldn’t kill him to get Apollo back, even if she’d fantasize about it.

Still, chrysanthemums.

“How’s your health?” she asks now, and he smiles and doesn’t tell. One of her conditions, that, _you can have it, but once you die, it’s mine again_. She made him add it to his will, chin hooked over his shoulder and an effort not to blink, as if she was scared she’d miss a letter or an entire clause if she did.

He’s sixty-three years old and trusts her enough that he has his cat test the tea before he dares taste it himself only half the time.

“How’s the kid?”

She takes her time, seemingly mulling it over.

“Skittish,” she says after a moment, tilting her head to the side like a bird asking for breadcrumbs. “He’s friends with a mouse.”

“Did he hate you?”

She smiles.

“He said I had pointy ankles, and asked me if I knew about moon shavings.”

“Moon shavings?”

She shrugs, a weird gesture for someone who came here wearing a chic hat and elbow-length gloves. He remembers her on his doorstep a month before, knuckles wind-chapped and fingers curled so tight around the edges of the package she insisted on bringing here herself that he thought she’d never let go. She looked him up and down as if she’d never seen him before, frowned as if he failed to pass some test, and then strode inside and insisted on picking the spot for Apollo herself.

Once in The Green Room, she ran the tip of her finger over the top of a mahogany cupboard, licked the dust off, and didn’t make a face.

Here will do, she said, resigned. Make sure he always has fresh flowers in the room, alright?

She unwrapped the painting the way he remembered undressing a girl he loved at sixteen, slow fingers and reverence.

“I told him I didn’t know what he meant but he wouldn’t explain,” she says now. “I think he’ll tell me, one day. I don’t mind waiting.”

She smiles, glances at the fresh chrysanthemums, smiles again.

“My health’s good, thank you for asking,” he tells her, a warning, and she laughs like when people play on glass.

Wind-chapped knuckles, that month before, and a bracelet of a bruise around her wrist, too. He was too polite to ask back then, and he regrets it every time she comes visit, because he hasn’t seen her hands since.

On her way out, she kisses him on the forehead, and doesn’t look at _Apollo the Lute Player_ hung above the mantelpiece even once, because if she looked, she’d never leave. He listens to the click of her heels, and wonders if an orphan boy is really worth a painting, what on Earth moon shavings might be, and if it’s human of them to understand love as a need to have.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is probably a confusing prologue I'm sorry. Thank you for reading <3


	2. ab initio

Ben McLaughlin, _The Train_

*

“Have you ever made a scene,” you said, filling in a Thomas Kinkade house, “and then put yourself inside it? Have you ever watched yourself from behind, going further and deeper into that landscape, away from you?”

~Ocean Vuong, _On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous_

*

When he first read the preface to _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ , Aubrey covered his eyes and tried to unsee it.

The book stayed on the coffee table for three days after that, open in the middle of its own accord, before he came back and dared pick it up again.

All art is quite useless, Wilde wrote, and Aubrey read the book cover to cover, understood nothing, and then read it all again. Later, whenever it felt appropriate to bring the book up when addressed by his parents’ dinner guests, he avoided admitting that he had had to read it twice.

When he tells his father he wants to go to Wilgefortis, he’s not thinking of Dorian Gray.

His father flips a newspaper page and finishes reading a paragraph before deigning to even so much as glance at him. Aubrey watches the loafer that has slid off his father’s heel dangle above one of his mother’s many Persian carpets and tries not to breathe too loud.

His father doesn’t put the newspaper away, only keeps his fingertip at the end of the last sentence he’d gotten to and frowns at Aubrey with distaste. Aubrey’s not sure if it’s a response to his person, or to the mention of Wilgefortis. It could be either. Wilgefortis is a good school, one his father normally wouldn’t frown at, but the bearded woman for a patron saint has earned his disdain long ago.

Suffragettes, he said in a tired voice the first time someone mentioned Wilgefortis at the dinner table, even though it was the 90s, and then sighed again when Aubrey’s mother put more salad than chicken on his plate as retaliation.

“It’s the third-best boarding school in the country,” Aubrey reminds him because his father’s memory tends to be very selective. He remembers the name of the member of Columbus’s crew who first sighted The New World, and the registered hour of the sighting, too, but thinks that Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley were the same person and would continue thinking so even if Aubrey corrected him.

It’s Aubrey’s life ambition to know everything his father knows, and everything he doesn’t, too. At not-quite-thirteen, he’s nowhere near reaching that goal, but not for lack of trying.

“You’re supposed to go to _the_ best boarding school in the country,” his father tells him, adjusting his glasses even though they don’t need adjusting. He ruined his eyesight in his twenties, studying law and slouching over heavy tomes with nothing but a streetlamp outside the window for light. Aubrey is in the process of similarly ruining his eyesight by examining art prints in library books with his nose pressed to the page, but he doesn’t walk into doorways just yet. “The one for _boys_.”

“Saint Nectan’s is co-ed now, too,” Aubrey points out, and wonders if it’s time for diagrams. He’s prepared many of those because his father is a man reluctantly impressed by extensive research, and believes that no one under the age of twenty-three should even attempt to make any arguments unsupported by footnotes, MHRA style.

“Oh, well, you know what I mean,” his father says and makes a dismissive gesture with his hand. He performs the very same gesture after dinner each night, a clue for Aubrey’s mother to clear away the plates, stained with offensive sauce and piled with chicken bones. Aubrey’s mother doesn’t believe in maids and pays the price by being waved at. By now, she usually only sighs once she’s in the kitchen and out of earshot.

“I’ve researched the two schools thoroughly,” Aubrey says, and then scolds himself internally. His father doesn’t appreciate the use of adverbs. He claims it’s inelegant. “It appears to me that law-oriented universities are more likely to consider applicants that are Wilgefortis graduates.”

He has diagrams for that, too, pie charts in colours he doesn’t like. It’s a tale as old as time, a father wanting his son to follow in his footsteps, and Aubrey wouldn’t do it for Dorian, but he’s ready to do it for Dora.

“You’re going to be considered by each and every university you apply to, Wilgefortis or not,” his father says, stern, and Aubrey nods.

“Naturally,” he agrees and bites his tongue a second too late to pin the adverb to the roof of his mouth and keep it from slipping out. “It would still be wise to take advantage of the – well, of the advantage.”

The best Aubrey can hope for is that his father will be intrigued enough to at least glance at the diagrams. Aubrey spent three nights drawing them and used up a crayon box while doing so, and he’d hate to see it all go to waste. He clears his throat and tries to look mature.

The problem with Wilgefortis is that it’s a fairly new school, founded and funded by a married couple whose more engaged half is one of the most influential women Aubrey’s ever had the pleasure of wanting to meet, a private art collector circling museums and auctions like a fox does with henhouses. She’s young, enthusiastic, and female, three qualities that Aubrey’s father looks upon with a certain degree of scorn, and it doesn’t help that she chose Wilgefortis for the patron saint of her half-school, half-museum. A teenage girl who miraculously grew a beard overnight to avoid being married off to a Muslim king and was then crucified by her father as punishment speaks to something inside Aubrey that he refuses to pay much thought, but it only inspires confusion, or even revulsion, in his father. His mother, too, seems puzzled by the choice, even though Aubrey’s sure she’d like Wilgefortis if they could ever meet. Still, “A bearded woman?” his mother said all those years ago, duck meat on the tines of her fork, and Aubrey knew that both his parents were remembering a circus show they’d taken him to when he was seven.

“They’re a strange sort, the Grahams,” his father says now, his shoulders relaxing into something a little less rigid. “I don’t want you mixed up in all that.”

And then there are, of course, the rumours, and the fact that Mrs. Graham’s name is December, and the weird charity initiative of admitting a scholarship to one orphaned child per year, coupled with her selling one painting from her collection each spring. Aubrey knows about the swarms of journalists buzzing around December Graham like stubborn flies that won’t be batted away, and occasionally visiting the school, too, but he could not care less. Only one thing matters to him when it comes to Wilgefortis, and it isn’t scandals, and it isn’t law studies prospects.

“I believe that this kind of challenge could greatly— could benefit my future career,” Aubrey says, making sure to sound reasonable rather than stubborn. It’s a trick he’s perfected at ten, one that requires perfect pronunciation and well-rounded vowels coupled with a monotone tempo varied only by putting stress on key words.

Career is a term Aubrey’s father is quite fond of.

“Alright, then,” his father says, squaring his shoulders. “So what about that research of yours?”

Aubrey reaches for the diagrams rolled into a telescope shape and shoved into the back pocket of his trousers, and makes sure not to smile.

*

His mother collects elephant figurines, for luck, and when Aubrey convinces his father that Wilgefortis is worth considering, he doesn’t have one in his pocket. He knows that luck will get him nowhere and that _veni, vidi, vici_ wasn’t about having gods on one’s side.

There are no paintings in the house, so when Aubrey tells his mother all about Wilgefortis, he stares at the china placed inside a glass-doors armoire instead.

“It’s because she’s an art collector, isn’t it?” his mother guesses, adding milk to her tea, and Aubrey doesn’t reply, because he doesn’t like lying to his mother. It always makes him think of something he saw outside his bedroom window once, kids with scabbed knees using make-do sling-shots to scare pigeons off with pebbles.

His mother has a way of adjusting his collar on her way past even when his collar doesn’t need adjusting, but she doesn’t do it now, only collects his empty cup and carries it to the kitchen without a backward glance. Aubrey waits, and, when she doesn’t come back, follows.

“Remember how you taught me to shoot ducks?” he asks, taking the plates from her to dry when she’s finished washing them. She hums as a confirmation, and squeezes out too much dish soap. “I didn’t like it one bit, that’s why I want to go there.”

What he means is that it is, indeed, all about art, and also that he’s a coward, and that he’d rather live in a museum than a house, too.

What he means is that if he has to shoot a duck to have one for dinner, he’d rather go vegetarian.

His mother sighs, and reaches out to pat his collar.

“Do you want me to loudly oppose it at dinner?” she offers, smiling at him sweetly. “He’s more likely to agree if I do, you know.”

Aubrey shakes his head.

“Do Switzerland,” he tells her. “I need to win this one on my own.”

He lets her think that it’s the Gaugain, the Kandinsky, and the Goya. It’s not a lie if she never asks.

*

He first read about December Graham in a newspaper. There was a picture in the middle of the article, a dark-haired woman sat on the arm of a sofa, her husband’s hands around her waist, a grip that looked secure enough for the fabric of her dress to wrinkle. They looked young and beautiful the way rich people always are, clothes and hairstyles expensive enough that genetics stopped being of consequence, buried underneath all the wealth.

Aubrey thought that December Graham would have looked ugly, had she been poor, and liked her instantly – how the shadow thrown by the wide brim of her hat didn’t quite reach her frog-smile.

The article was titled, ridiculously, _From Rags to Peaches_. You could see a framed painting hang half-an-inch askew on the wall behind the Grahams, Monet’s _Peaches_ , one of December Graham’s first.

“You spend enough time bargaining rotting apples at a dingy market when you’re thirteen, you learn,” was the quote given in lieu of explanation for how Mrs. Graham had managed to acquire the painting, which, Aubrey noted, was no explanation at all. “What I really want is _The Beach at Fecamp_.”

A year later, she had it.

*

Aubrey has never seen a mouse outside a pet store.

*

“Isn’t that too many shirts?” Aubrey asks, watching his mother fold clothes inside a leather suitcase. He’s perfectly capable of packing his things himself, but he lets her examine his socks for threadbare fabric and fold a small bag of lavender between his underwear, watching from the doorway as she cuts the tags off his jumpers.

“There’s no such thing as too many shirts,” she tells him, and puts a book of psalms inside the suitcase, too, even though Aubrey’s father forbade her to take him to church years before. “You will write letters, and you will call.”

“I will write letters,” he agrees because he doesn’t like talking on the phone. Then, “I will call.”

“Good boy.”

She forgets to put an umbrella inside the suitcase, and Aubrey doesn’t remind her. He thinks she’ll remember an hour or two after putting him on the train in London, and will call to tell him as soon as he gets to school.

He doesn’t like talking on the phone but listening is different.

“It’s a good thing you’re tall for your age,” she tells him and scrutinises him, hands on hips. “They’d bully you horribly, otherwise, as soon as you started ironing your underwear.”

“You’re the one who taught me to iron everything.”

She sighs and closes the suitcase. She has to sit on it, too, which, bird-boned as she is, doesn’t do much, shirtsleeves still poking out.

“I went to a boarding school, too,” she tells him, rubbing her nose. She’s allergic to everything, and he doesn’t remember what she sounds like when her nose is not blocked. “They tell you to jump in a lake after curfew, and then they steal your clothes. I swallowed a water strider like that, once. Say, _is_ there a lake at Wilgefortis?”

He doesn’t like lying to her, so he doesn’t shake his head.

“Will I embarrass you terribly if I come visit sometime?”

To that, he can safely shake his head no.

He’s wearing the tie she gave him for his thirteenth birthday, only a few weeks ago, Outhwaite’s _Fairy Wedding_ printed on it, and he frowns when she loosens it for him and takes it off his neck.

“I thought I was too tall to be bullied,” he says, quiet, and lets her adjust his collar, wondering if it’s the last time she will before Christmas. Wilgefortis is too far for him to come home for weekends.

“Too tall to be bullied by kids, maybe,” she admits, shoving the tie in his trousers’ pocket. “Your father, though.”

The tie is supposed to be a secret.

“You’re going to be lonely,” he realizes, stupid enough to say it out loud. She smiles, fond, and tells him that she’ll sneeze her way to their neighbour’s house whenever Aubrey’s father’s tirades get too boring. Aubrey doesn’t say that she might as well just move in with Miss Clarke across the road, for fear she’ll scold him. She expects him to respect his father always, even though the way she rolls her eyes at the man whenever she thinks no one’s looking tells Aubrey that she doesn’t much respect him herself.

Aubrey’s mother slurps her tea, has knobby knees, and cups spiders in her hands to laugh at their long legs, and Aubrey knows that his father doesn’t love her. It seems to him an error of judgment that couldn’t be justified with any footnote, but his father has never had to justify it, so it is what it is.

“You think it’s absurd, naming a school after Wilgefortis,” Aubrey says because it needs to be said.

“It’s unusual,” his mother says, the kind of diplomatic answer she’s learned to think of on the spot over the years. “Suppose your father would divorce me if _I_ grew a beard overnight?”

Aubrey smiles, and doesn’t have the heart to tell her that his father most likely wouldn’t notice.

*

The train is green, and Aubrey’s father is absent.

In the morning, he glanced at Aubrey over coffee and eggs – sunny-side-up – and said, that’s it, then. He didn’t hug him, or shake his hand, only folded his palm over Aubrey’s shoulder, and squeezed.

Aubrey decided that it didn’t feel like a threat.

“I forgot that normal thirteen-year-olds are _loud_ ,” his mother says, and frowns. There’s a smear of sunscreen on her nose, covering the only spot where she’s ever flushed, and it makes her look death-cold. “Is that a trampled pair of boxer shorts over there?”

She hasn’t remembered the umbrella yet.

“Polka dots,” confirms Aubrey, and remembers how he read the entirety of _The Wind in the Willows_ to her, once. She used to get terrible migraines, and would curl up with her head in his lap like a cat, asking him about toads and badgers. He’d read himself into hoarseness, pronouncing half the words wrong. After that, he could never remember English being confusing, knew it and couldn’t unknow it.

For the first time since then, he feels like he doesn’t know it after all. There’s nothing to say, not even adverbs.

“Say hi to _The Blue Rider_ for me,” his mother says, and doesn’t comment on it when he puts on the Outhwaite tie. “Do you remember how to swim?”

“No one will throw me in the lake.”

“They will manipulate you into jumping into the lake.”

“I’m not that easily manipulated.”

She stares at Aubrey like he’s just broken her heart.

“Go become a lawyer, then, so that when I kill your father and dump his body in some pond for carp to eat, you’ll defend me in court.”

She never mentions how he doesn’t want to be a lawyer, because he doesn’t mention it, either. She was never one to say his dreams will come true, holding his hand a bit too hard and repeating that he’d be miserable instead. It was the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for him. A disillusioned child, she told him once, chopping onions and crying a river, won’t grow to be disillusioned. Get it?

He got it.

“You wouldn’t really kill him,” he says, now, and she arches an eyebrow. She’s wearing green eyeshadow, a rich shade his father would call scandalous, only he didn’t pay enough attention to notice and call it anything.

“I’d shoot him like a duck.”

“You said you shoot ducks because they’re pretty.”

Ten years old, grass grown long like hair, and his mother telling him, _to love is to have._

“He used to be pretty, once.”

Aubrey frowns. His parents met on a boat, which is why his mother won’t step foot on one, now. The thing with boats, she told him once, is that once you get on, you can’t exactly get off.

When he brought up harbours, she rolled her eyes and told him that wasn’t how marriage worked back in her days.

“Bon voyage, then,” she says, and ruffles his hair. It’s the same as hers, a boring, sun-bleached brown of small, autumn birds, doing its own thing and scornful of combs. He forces it to part on the side each morning to look more or less presentable. “Try not to swallow, alright? Water striders are fine, but what if they have _leeches_ there?”

He shakes his head and doesn’t hug her because he’s already her height, and there’s something about it that he can’t stand.

He’ll regret it later, of course.

On the train, there’s a separate wagon booked for Wilgefortis students. Not everyone is taking the train from London, but many are, and in the semi-official letter he got from the school, it said, _imagine if you started feeling at home before you even got here._

His father didn’t appreciate the familiarity, and Aubrey himself doubted he’d feel at home even once he did get there, but he thought of Dora and kept the letter, folded into a bookmark.

He drags his suitcase past the compartments, and notes with dismay that most of them are at least half-full. He sighs and slides the door to the last one open, two girls and one boy already inside.

“Oh, a cute boy!” The girl sat next to the window exclaims when she sees him. Her hair’s black and a mess of curls and bobby-pins, and she’s wearing knee-high socks with pink and yellow stripes. “Quick, grab him before he runs away!”

The boy next to her seems to take it as an order, reaching out to grab Aubrey by the sleeve, and so Aubrey raises his arms, palms-out.

“Not running away,” he assures the boy, who has squirrel eyes and is wearing a big newsboy cap with a button on top. He looks ten rather than thirteen, and he makes Aubrey think of how birds have hollow bones and how some birds get eaten and have nothing _but_ bones. “Is one of the free seats, er, free?”

The second girl tilts her head at him and then gives a brisk nod. Aubrey stares at her and can’t help thinking that she looks wet, her hair in silky wisps and her face like a still-drying watercolour picture. She’s quite small, but there’s something boneless about her, like it wouldn’t hurt if he bumped into her in the street.

“ _Oh_ ,” the first girl says, smiling wide and clasping her hands together. “We get to keep him!”

“We do?” the boy says with a frown, as if he can’t decide if that’s good news. “Well, I’d help you put your luggage up on the shelf, but Jerry here already had to help me put mine up.”

The first girl’s smile widens. Aubrey smiles back, something between his father’s own political smile and his mother’s enthusiastic grin, and hoists his suitcase up. Once it’s secured on the shelf, he turns to face the kids ogling him like he’s a yet undiscovered species of a tropical bird, even though as far as he knows he’s pretty boring, looks-wise.

“I suppose introductions are in order,” he says, feeling stupid, and loosens his tie. The boy frowns at it but doesn’t say anything. “I’m Aubrey.”

The first girl laughs at his name, and introduces herself as Jerusalem (“Mother said that I kicked a lot when she was pregnant, right? Apparently, she wanted to punish me somehow”), then points to the other one and introduces her as Regina (“Hard to say what _her_ mother wanted to punish her for. She doesn’t look like the kicking sort, does she?”).

“And that’s Francis, but we call him Quickly.”

“You met me all of ten minutes ago,” the boy says, and Jerusalem grins at him and pats him on the chest.

“ _Exactly._ Because we’re _Quick._ ”

“Apparently, that’s his surname,” Regina explains, flashing Aubrey an apologetic smile.

“Boy, it sure is nice to be going somewhere I won’t be the filthy rich friend,” Jerusalem says, unprompted, as soon as Aubrey takes a seat. “My parents are rich, but not _rich_ rich, you know? Once, a boy told me that his dad said me and my folks used fancy stationery instead of toilet paper, which is just ridiculous, because stationery is not soft enough for _that_. We’d all get a rash from it, I bet.”

The train moves from the station, and Aubrey realizes that he hasn’t looked out the window and tried to spot his mother to wave goodbye. He sighs, waiting for the train to gain speed, and turns to the window only then.

He doesn’t ask the other kids if they’re excited about the paintings, because there’s a chance that they’d say no.

“I’ve heard that they serve caviar for dinner at Wilgefortis,” Quickly says, tugging on his newsboy cap. Beneath it, his hair is in pale tufts, like he’s a recently-hatched chick. “And isn’t that just cruel and blegh, not only fish, but fish _babies_.”

“ _I_ ’ve heard that people heard that but that it’s not really true,” Jerusalem says, stretching her legs across the seat and kicking her feet up on Quickly’s lap. “Shame, I like when it po- _ops_! on your tongue. Hey, let’s play that game where one person says a word, and then another person says the second word and then we make a sentence!”

Half an hour later, Regina is knitting a scarf, wool pooled in her lap, and the view outside the window looks like a second-hand coat, the countryside full of square-shaped fields and scarcely any trees in sight. The sun has been replaced by a thick cover of clouds, heavy and bulging like something caught in invisible fists.

Aubrey tries ‘foreboding’ under ‘sense of fearful apprehension’ in his crossword, and finds that it fits.

“Jesus didn’t _have_ a brother,” Quickly insists, staring at Jerusalem’s feet in his lap like they’ve personally offended him. The argument started two stops ago with a discussion about pineapples import and Judas, and Aubrey has long lost track of it. So far, he’s concluded that Quickly is skittish, Regina quiet, and Jerusalem hyperactive. There are barely-visible letters dried on the window, something from when it must have been moist on a colder night, and they spell out a _fuck you_. Aubrey has been staring at it, wondering if the others would notice if he tried to wipe it off with his sleeve.

The train is quite old, and it jostles on the tracks, reminding him of something, he’s not sure what. Someone running, pebbles moving—

His mother told him that school’s where you grow up, and it occurs to him that he hasn’t really had a childhood to grow out of.

“You don’t know that he didn’t,” Jerusalem argues, still about Jesus, rolling a sheet of paper into a ball. She’s already thrown three at Quickly, and Aubrey’s decided that if she won’t have picked them up by the time they reach their final station, he will. He always thinks about people who clean others’ messes for a living, the trolley lady or maybe even the ticket inspector bending down to collect rubbish, back aching, and it always makes him feel sick. “He could have even had a _twin_ , for all we know.”

“No, he couldn’t have, it says in The Bible—”

“Personally, I find The Bible offensive,” Jerusalem interrupts, and then throws the paper ball at Aubrey rather than at Quickly. He lets it bounce off his face, and raises his eyebrows when she leans closer to him, chin in hands. “Aye there, Aubrey! What do you say you go find the trolley and buy me something to drink?”

“Won’t the trolley get to us, sooner or later?” he says, cupping his hand for change anyway.

“Sure, but I like things sooner, not later,” Jerusalem chirps and hands him a few coins dug out of her pocket, and some old crackers crumbs, too.

Aubrey sighs.

“Anything else?”

*

He’ll remember it later, what his mother had said about getting on and off boats.

*

When he gets back with hot chocolate in a paper cup, there’s a boy standing in the entrance to the compartment. He has a mess of black curls and is small-ish. There’s a bag thrown to the ground next to him, and his trousers are an inch too short, revealing dark-blue socks, too thick for September. His jumper is big enough that it could be worn as an immodest dress.

“Let me get this straight,” Jerusalem says inside, balling up another sheet of paper. “You want us all to squeeze into some other compartment so that you can have our territory all to your ugly scrawny self?”

The boy scoffs, irritated. Behind him, Aubrey remains unnoticed.

“It’s a mode of public transport, and not your territory, not even if you piss on the seat, which I’d rather you didn’t do,” the boy says. He sounds snotty and spoiled, even though his jumper has holes at the elbows and a big brown patch on the back. “And yes, that _is_ what I want. I was happy to camp outside the toilet but it smells by now, and I don’t want the stench to go into my clothes. People who quit smoking still smell cigarettes on their things years later, and I don’t have enough clothes to smell of _feces_ of all things—”

“Alright, alright, Adolph, we have two spare sits here, in case you haven’t noticed—”

“I’m _Jewish_ , you _can’t_ call me Adolph,” the kid snaps. “And I refuse to sit with you _rich_ people—”

“Oh, shut it, I’m done with kids like you going all snobby on me for being a snob—”

“And she admits it!”

“I admit _nothing_ —”

“Why, you just _did_! And besides, you don’t want to sit next to me, I’m not vaccinated and can—”

The train comes to a stop more suddenly than the kid must have expected, because he lurches forward and falls face-down, sprawled on the floor between the seats, and releases a muffled whine.

Aubrey hands the hot chocolate to Quickly, who is stunned enough to wordlessly take it from him, and bends over the kid, fitting his hands under his armpits. He hoists him up, and it’s more difficult than he’d expected, but he manages to return the boy to a vertical position.

The boy is quiet for a moment, and it takes Aubrey all of embarrassing ten seconds to remove his hands from his armpits. The boy clears his throat then, and glances over his shoulder, raising an eyebrow.

He looks like a painting, only Aubrey can’t remember which one.

“Who the hell are _you_?” the boy snaps. “And why would you just manhandle someone like that, what is _wrong_ with you? Do I look like a DIY bookshelf to you, hmmm?”

The boy’s eyes remind Aubrey of his father pouring himself a glass of bourbon, and telling Aubrey that coins were round because so was the world.

It occurs to him, l’esprit d’escalier at its finest, that his father wasn’t right, because coins might be round, but they’re flat, too.

All art is quite useless, Wilde wrote, and Aubrey doesn’t know why he’d remember it now, but smiles, anyway.

“Wow, you’re one prickly gal,” Jerusalem marvels as the boy opens his mouth to continue his tirade. “And after Aubrey helped you, too.”

The boy swivels, and becomes a tornado of insults and spit. Aubrey stares at the tight line of his shoulders, and feels the urge to gently steer the kid to an empty seat and go get him a hot chocolate, too, but won’t risk invading the boy’s personal space again.

The jumper, when he felt it under his fingers, had holes at the armpits, too.

“…And don’t call me gal, either, because I certainly am _not_ one, and can flash you to prove it, too—”

“Well, go on then,” Jerusalem cuts him off, a teasing smile spreading on her face slow like butter on toast and eyes going one-pound-coin wide. “Just let me find my magnifying glass first.”

The boy growls and begins unbuckling his belt. Aubrey decides it’s a good thing, considering, when the train lurches, throwing the boy off-balance yet again. This time, Aubrey manages to grab his collar before the kid can fall again.

For a moment, no one dares say a word, the train jostling into motion and pulling away from the station, and then Jerusalem and Quickly both burst out laughing. Regina only smiles, almost sympathetic, and when the boy sniffs, Aubrey wonders if he’s going to cry.

“You good?” he asks, and only lets go of his collar – a dirty shade of white, as if it’s been thrown together with dark laundry one time too many – when the boy nods. “How about you sit next to me? I’m not _that_ rich and I’ll share my peanuts with you.”

The boy’s shoulders sag, but he complies, curling up in the window seat, and leaving his bag in the entrance for Aubrey to deal with. Aubrey smiles, keeps himself from shaking his head, and squeezes the bag on top of his own suitcase. It’s surprisingly light, and the fabric almost gives in one place, the threads worn thin.

“What do your parents do, then, that you’re all high and mighty?” Jerusalem addresses the boy once Aubrey has taken a seat next to him. The kid is watching her with huge eyes, brows drawn together in anger and knees dragged right up to his chin. He looks like a small animal that forgot how to sleep through winter, aggravated and cold. “You must be paying for this school, too, somehow.”

“Currently, they’re being eaten by worms six feet under,” the boy tells her, with no small degree of smugness. He smiles like he’s just won a round of poker, something gleeful about it, and Jerusalem stares at him like he’s bonkers.

Aubrey thinks he might be.

“Oh, you’re _the orphan_!” Quickly says, and Regina looks up from her knitting to shoot him a disapproving look.

Aubrey stares at the boy, curious. Each year, one orphaned child. Each year, one painting. Each year, the two may or may not be connected.

“Aye, aye,” the boy says, grumpy. “I have a name, too.”

“Let’s hear it, then,” Jerusalem says, tossing the ball of paper up in the air and catching it in her hand, as if she’s considering who to throw it at next.

The boy stares at her without saying a word.

“Adolph it is, then.”

Aubrey has to grab his collar again to keep the boy from throwing himself at Jerusalem after releasing a strangled battle cry. He sounds like an angry pheasant. Jerusalem smiles innocently and throws the ball his way in a perfect arch. When it lands in the boy’s mouth, Quickly whispers, _homerun_.

The kid chokes, and Aubrey pats him on the back until he hacks the paper up. He uses his crossword book to do it, too, because personal space, and hopes that the boy can tell.

The boy stares at Jerusalem, speechless in his indignation, and then reaches up to jerk at the window handle until it’s halfway open. Aubrey has the ridiculous thought that he’s going to try and jump out of the train, and barely keeps himself from grabbing him by the collar yet again. Instead, the kid reaches for the hot chocolate Jerusalem put on the small fold-out table under the window and sticks his hand out. They all watch the fluid leave the cup in an arc, going backward instead of down because of the train’s speed.

“Oh, now you’ve done it, you little—”

“My name’s Regina!,” Regina says, strangely robotic and so loud that Aubrey flinches. “How do you do!”

The boy stares at her outstretched hand. She’s still holding the knitting needles.

“Ezra,” he says, slow. “Doing fine.”

“There’s no way in hell I’m calling you Ezra,” Jerusalem says, straining to see out the window, as if she’ll spot the remains of her drink what must by now be yards away. “My name is enough religious mumbo-jumbo. What’s your last name?”

“I don’t think that’s how you use mumbo-jumbo in a sentence,” Aubrey says, too quiet for anyone to hear.

“What, is, your, last, _name_?”

“Weiss.”

“ _Jesus_.”

“Not that, no.”

“ _Thank God_.”

“You’re _absolutely infr—_ ” the kid starts, and then goes cross-eyed. “Infir— Infurir—”

“Easy there,” Aubrey says, patting him gently on the shoulder with the crossword book, and across from them, Jerusalem gasps.

“ _Easy_!” she exclaims with a degree of enthusiasm that makes Aubrey think of Archimedes and the eureka effect. “Ezra, easy, easy-peasy!”

The kid – Ezra – Easy? – blinks at her, and then scowls like he’s just bit through a slice of lemon.

“Are you calling me a _prostitute_?”

Jerusalem stares at him and then bursts out laughing so loud that Regina glances worriedly at the ajar compartment door, as if she expects someone to come and yell at them to shut it any moment.

“Oh, Easy, why, you’re simply delightful—”

“Argh, just shut up, shut up, _shut up_!”

Jerusalem does, but Aubrey doesn’t expect her to stop smirking any time soon. Easy huffs, offended, and refuses to look at her, stewing in anger for the next three stations. Aubrey wonders if he’ll get yelled at if he offers to go buy him tea, and at one point Easy turns to look at him and glowers at him like no one before ever has.

“What are you staring at, anyway? And what the hell is that on your tie?” he frowns, reaching up as if he intends to grab hold of the thing, only he aborts the gesture halfway through and drops his hand, scowling at it as if it moved against his will. “Why the hell is a frog officiating a wedding?”

“Ida Rentoul Outhwaite.”

Easy stares.

“What?”

Aubrey panics.

“Are you excited about the paintings?” he asks, quiet enough that he doesn’t think anyone else catches it. The question seems to baffle Easy enough that he stops frowning in anger for a moment, and, when cleared of indignation, there’s something sweetly innocent about his face, as if he hasn’t lived long enough to do anything bad yet.

“What paintings?”

Aubrey feels something in himself click like a suitcase latch, either open or closed. He shakes his head, and three stops later Easy, worn by exchanging creative insults with Jerusalem, slumps asleep against his shoulder, head lolling, one arm flung across Aubrey’s lap.

Regina puts a finger to her lips and takes sewing supplies out of her bag. Over the next half an hour, she manages to mend the hole on Easy’s elbow as he drools all over Aubrey’s collar, blissfully unaware, warm breath tickling Aubrey’s skin. Aubrey doesn’t dare move, Easy’s slow exhales strange on his skin, touch but not, scarf but no wool.

“When he wakes up,” Quickly says, watching Easy warily, “can I ask him if it’s true that kids in orphanages have to shake cockroaches out of their shoes before putting them on in the morning?”

*

Once, Aubrey saw his mother free a fly from a spider’s net.

A week later, she told him that if she went to the beach and found a mollusc in an exquisite shell, then poured salt all over it until it dried to death and scooped it out to keep the shell all to herself, she would call it love.

*

They have ten more minutes or so before they have to start taking their luggage off the shelves, and when it starts raining, Aubrey tries to reach and shove the window closed without disturbing Easy’s sleep.

He wakes him up anyway and watches him blink awake, mortified. Easy rubs at his eyes, still half in Aubrey’s lap, and then just sits there, gaping at the wet patch on Aubrey’s collar.

“ _Ew_ ,” he says after a while.

“It’s you who—”

“Shut _up_ ,” Easy interrupts him, shoving him away as if it’s Aubrey who crawled into _his_ lap. “Rich people, I swear.”

“Out of interest,” Quickly says and, for a second, Aubrey expects him to ask about the cockroaches. “Does anyone have an umbrella?”

Aubrey thinks of his mother, who must be long home by now. He wonders if the house will seem quieter for her now, and then remembers that it was always quiet with him in it, too, a silent boy memorising poems and statistics and ironing his own shirts.

Once, she told him she’d wanted a girl, and when he apologised, she looked angry enough that he flinched away, thinking she would hit him, even though she never had before.

“We can use Easy as an umbrella,” Jerusalem suggests, grinning wickedly. “I want the hair. It’s fluffy enough to soak the worst of the rain right up.”

Easy screeches, about to launch into another lengthy complaint, when there’s an announcement that they’re nearing their station. Aubrey starts picking the paper balls from the floor, and Quickly gets knocked over the head with his own suitcase, trying to lever it down and onto the seat.

“That will bruise,” he whines and then gets knocked over the head with Jerusalem’s suitcase, too. “So many bruises.”

Later, when the others have tumbled out of the compartment, Aubrey reaches for his suitcase and ends up watching Easy examine his mended shirt instead. Easy catches him watching, and drops his arm stiffly, hand slapping over the new stitches as if he doesn’t want Aubrey to see, even though Aubrey already has.

“What did you mean before, about paintings?” he asks Aubrey, staring at him with some strange defiance, as if Aubrey himself is a question, one that he wants to reply ‘no’ to. There’s still a bit of crust in the corner of his eye, and it bugs Aubrey, but not enough for him to dare point it out.

“You’ll see soon enough, I suppose,” he says, and Easy scowls at him. Aubrey’s about to explain to spare himself the rant, but Easy’s face softens right away, and he looks almost regretful.

“I can wash your jumper for you, you know,” he offers, staring at his shoes. “I didn’t mean to— I’ll wash it _properly_ —”

“No need,” Aubrey says, quick. “It’s already dry, anyway,” he adds, patting the spot with his hand, and feels strangely comforted when he finds it still wet.

*

He won’t learn that his parents didn’t really meet on a boat for years.

*

There’s about thirty of them getting off at the station, and a man in a purple storm coat is waiting there at them, squinting at his glasses and looking helplessly around, as if searching for a bit of dry fabric to wipe them off with. He introduces himself as Alfred Rose, the school’s librarian.

He ticks their names off on a half-soaked list, kids of all heights huddled around him. Next to Aubrey, Easy sticks his tongue out and catches raindrops on it, then makes a face, hair already wet but still springy.

“It tastes sweeter than back home,” he mumbles, and Aubrey wonders what back home means for someone who doesn’t have parents and whose coat has more holes than buttons. On Easy’s other side, Jerusalem hooks her finger on one of those, stretching until Easy bats her hand away, causing a few threads to snap.

“How’s not being the filthy rich friend going for you?” Regina says dryly, and Jerusalem pokes her tongue out at her but lets go of Easy’s coat.

Aubrey wonders if ‘friend’ is adequate. He can imagine them in a few days, passing each other in the corridor on their way to class, too embarrassed to say hi.

A coach with seats that smell of old cheese sandwiches and bubble-gum takes them to the school through a patchwork of fields in various shades of green, and after half an hour, Aubrey spots the building at a distance, no bigger than a fingerprint.

“It looks haunted,” Quickly says behind him. “I’ve heard it _is_ haunted.”

“It’s too far away to look anything but possibly existent,” Jerusalem scoffs, and Aubrey mouths ‘possibly existent’ quietly, shaking his head. A mile later, he can see the ivy-covered walls and the turrets at the end of a long driveway, and thinks, soon.

The entrance hall is all marble and rich-blue carpets, thick enough to soak up the water dripping from their coats and dark enough that the mud stains won’t show. There’s a huge staircase splitting into two halfway up that looks like it should be behind a red sash, made to be admired rather than walked on. Above it, facing the school entrance, hangs _The White Duchess._

“Oh,” Easy says next to him, the small knob of his Adam’s apple strangely vulnerable-looking, so that Aubrey wonders if he’s cold, even though they’re finally indoors. “ _That’s_ what you meant.”

Aubrey smiles and stares at one of the paintings December Graham got people to sell to her, from rags to peaches, indeed.

“She’s so _ugly_ , though,” Easy complains, and Aubrey’s face falls. “And what’s with the dog?”

When Easy sneezes, Aubrey instinctively reaches up as if to hand him a handkerchief, even though he doesn’t have one, and Easy shoots him a confused look but takes it as a cue to blow his nose in Aubrey’s sleeve.

Aubrey doesn’t correct him, only stares, puzzled, and wonders how come he’s not looking at one of the dozens of reasons he came here instead. 

*

He and Quickly are assigned the same room, to share with two other boys who weren’t on the train. They’ve lost Easy somewhere along the way, and when they get to their dormitory, two beds are already taken, belongings scattered all over one in a very territorial fashion and a boy sprawled starfish-style on the other, face-down.

“Name’s Kipp,” he says in a strangely melodic, lilting voice. “Sure was a tiring day, not that you would know.”

Aubrey glances at Quickly, who looks like he wants to go ask for a change of rooms already.

“Mother-dear baked cookies for my future dormmates but I ate all of them on the way here, I’m afraid,” the boy continues, waving his hand in the air like a conductor mid-performance, and then letting it drop to the bed.

There’s a painting in the room, nothing famous, a framed picture of a girl picking daffodils, and Aubrey swings his suitcase onto the bed under it, glancing at Quickly to check if it’s okay with him.

Quickly nods, and takes the remaining bed. He starts unpacking his socks, and Aubrey watches him, reluctant to open his own suitcase, full of lavender bags and colour-coded, greys with greys and maroon with brown. By the time Quickly’s done with the socks, Aubrey’s counted twenty-three pairs.

“Supper, or something?” the other boy – _Kipp_ – whines from his bed, and then tumbles off it and to the ground. It takes him ages to pick himself up off the floor, limbs too long for his body. He moves like his bones would bend instead of breaking if he hit something too hard and he seems to be melting from one spot to another rather than taking steps. There’s something half-awkward about it, like he’ll grow up to be graceful but for now is a gawky teenager like the rest of them. “I hate boarding school, and it’s barely even started.”

He looks vaguely familiar but not familiar enough for Aubrey to start wondering where he could know him from.

There are meadows outside the window and Aubrey can’t think of anything better than this, dozens of paintings in a building surrounded by miles of nothing, as if there is a God out there who cupped a few good things in his palm and said, here.

“Supper, yes,” Quickly seconds, and Aubrey follows them out of the room, checking all the walls on their way for paintings.

He knows that it’s a tradition for the new school year at Wilgefortis to begin with December Graham’s speech, but once they’re sat in the dining hall – refectory, someone whispers – a man in a toupee who introduces himself as Richard Longborn tells them that the woman in question couldn’t make it, what a shame.

“She’s fallen ill,” he explains, spreading his hands as if to say, what can you do? “Nothing serious.”

Kipp drops his fork and stares at it a moment too long before picking it up again.

“Ill, huh,” he whispers into his plate.

There’s a spot on the wall where the yellow paint is a bit paler than around it, and Aubrey knows from multiple brochures that that’s where _Apollo the Lute Player_ used to be.

He wonders why it hasn’t been replaced yet.

“ _That’s_ the headmaster?” Easy says through a mouthful of food on Aubrey’s left, the first person to start eating. “Why does he have a dead rat on his head?”

On Aubrey’s right, Quickly perks up.

“How do you know what dead rats look like?” he blurts out, eyeing Easy warily. Easy stares at him, chewing loudly, and then he smirks like bad news.

“Well, see, Francis, at the orphanage we set traps for rats and then we fry them for dinner whenever we run out of chicken.”

Quickly rolls his eyes at that, and Aubrey decides to be a good sport and not bring up cockroaches.

“Who’s shouty over there?” Kipp asks in a hushed voice, leaning over the table. His hastily put on tie, tied like a shoelace, almost dips into the open jar of raspberry jam. “And what’s that about orphanages?”

“Us orphans have ears, too, you know,” Easy tells him, leaning over the table himself. His tie does dip in the jar, and Aubrey fishes it out for him and moves it aside. “Working ears, too, though I wish they weren’t, sometimes.”

Kipp smiles, charmed.

“Careful there,” Jerusalem whispers, nudging him with her elbow. “It bites.”

Aubrey wipes jam off Easy’s tie with a napkin, and Easy’s too busy glowering at everyone in five-feet radius to notice and complain about that, too.

“Anyway, what’s toupee man’s name again?” Jerusalem says at some point, trying to shove a piece of toast in Easy’s mouth across the table to make him shut up. “And do we _really_ have to be in our rooms by nine?”

“He said you can stay longer at the library, but you need a special permission,” Aubrey clarifies, and Jerusalem makes a face at him.

“That’s for _literate_ people,” she says. “My poor self has no use for a library, and think of little Easy here, would you? The kid has only just learned how to write capital H, there’s still two-thirds of the alphabet left to go—”

It’s a special sort of dramatic irony when Easy bites Jerusalem on the hand, causing her to yelp and drop the toast.

“Just because I’m a year younger than you—”

“You’re _what_?”

Everyone stares at him and Easy blushes and slides low on his chair.

“Twelve,” he grumbles, sucking on the spot on his tie where there’s still a smear of jam absent-mindedly.

“Twelve?” Jerusalem repeats, cross-eyed.

“Yes, _twelve._ ”

“How so?”

Easy slides even lower, only his eyes and hairline visible over the edge of the table.

“The woman said I was a fast learner, and would catch up fast,” he mumbles, eyeing them all distrustfully. “Don’t you think I’m stupid, because I’m _not_. She said I’ll know the least of all the kids here, but that if I try hard, I’ll be her smartest graduate yet. She said she could _tell_.”

“Do you mean Mrs. Graham told you that?” Quickly inquires, and Easy makes an impatient noise.

“Yes, her, the pointy one.”

“You’re quite pointy yourself, you know,” Regina tells him, not unkindly, and Jerusalem, strangely quiet, bends low and crawls under the table. Easy frowns, and then yelps a moment later when she slides close to his seat and props her chin on his knees.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he hisses. Quickly flinches at the swear word.

Aubrey himself can’t remember ever swearing. His mother told him to, once, said that it would give him a lot of satisfaction, but Aubrey didn’t think it would, so he stayed quiet, thinking of how he liked longer words better.

“Checking if you’re wearing a diaper,” Jerusalem says, nonchalant, and when Easy starts screaming about assault, Kipp reaches over to fold a hand over his mouth.

Aubrey stares at the pale rectangle of faded paint on the wall and forgets to eat.

*

The building used to be a mental institution, as it often goes.

Well, first it was somebody’s fancy mansion, _then_ it was a mental institution.

There aren’t many rumours about it being haunted, but there are _some_. Quickly mentions it every five minutes, I’ve heard that someone slit their wrists here and they never washed the blood out, I’ve heard once a woman screamed so loud here that a window broke, and, after the fifth time, everyone starts ignoring him.

Alfred the librarian gives them a tour, listing historical facts about the paintings, but never recent enough to explain how exactly December Graham got hold of them. Kipp keeps trying to ask about it, even though he initially didn’t strike Aubrey as someone who’d be this interested in the school’s complicated and puzzling past. He’ll say a joke every now and then or poke Quickly in the ribs after one conspiracy theory too many, but whenever Alfred the librarian mentions December Graham, his eyes are sharp.

When they stop under _Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II_ , Alfred the librarian tells them that Klimt never married but was a father to fourteen children.

“The only woman he ever painted twice,” he says, a wink and a finger to his lips like it’s a secret. Aubrey knows that _Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I_ is more recognizable with all its molten gold, but he’s always preferred this one. He imagines Adele Bloch-Bauer as the kind of woman, who, much like his own mother, didn’t need to be dressed in gold at all.

 _Sometimes you bid on a painting until you win it,_ December Graham said in an interview once, _but other times, you and its owner get into a fight instead, ripped earrings and ripped earlobes, hair caught in fists and skin caught in teeth, until you become reluctant friends and roll a die._

She never said anything about it, but she does have a scar on her ear, skin re-grown clumsy like two different tissues forced together. She puts her hair behind her ears in photos and smiles instead of trying to hide it.

“When she hired me,” Alfred the librarian tells them, walking at a brisk pace that makes it hard for them to catch up, “she told me, don’t you think it would have been wonderful to have paintings here back when it was still a hospital? I’d never heard anyone refer to it as a hospital before, and it seemed so earnest and unapologetic that I took the job right away, even though it was a bit of a long shot back then.”

There are sculptures, too, Greek figures caught dancing, dying and loving, some of them missing limbs, some of them heads.

“Why are they all _naked_?” Easy whispers and it echoes in the hallway lined with stone, causing Alfred the librarian to smile.

“Remember when you were oh-so-eager to take your pants off to prove a point just this afternoon?” Jerusalem whispers back, and Alfred the librarian frowns and shakes his head, pretending not to have heard, but glances at Easy warily. Kipp raises an eyebrow at Aubrey, and Aubrey shrugs.

“What happens on the train stays on the train,” Regina says diplomatically, and gently steers Easy forward to catch up with the rest of the group. He trips his way to the small crowd gathered under Monet’s _Open Sea_ , mouthing off creative insults addressed to Jerusalem – ‘goat’s tit’, ‘stupid Jew-hating rotting cuckoo egg’, ‘flat-nosed flounder’– until he trips one time too many, stumbles into Kipp, and notices the painting.

“Oh,” he breathes, catching himself with a hand on Kipp’s shoulder. “ _Oh_.”

Alfred the librarian lists off impressionism facts, and they all seem to go right over Easy’s head. He stares, mouth tilted open just barely, the way Aubrey remembers people from church, waiting to fall into prayer. Easy grabs Aubrey’s sleeve, too, the same one he blew his nose into before, something absent-minded about it, like his body knows he needs the leverage but like he’d startle if Aubrey so much as moved, surprised to find them touching.

“She said I would like the open sea,” he says, quiet, cocking his head to the side. “I thought she meant the school was near the coast, only it was inland on the map.”

“Why would she say that?” Aubrey asks him and Easy glances at his sleeve, confused, and then lets go of it, cradling his hand close to his chest as if scalded.

“She said she knew it right away when she saw that stupid drawing,” Easy explains grudgingly, like he’s being forced to share a piece of bread with Aubrey even though he’s still hungry himself. He rushes to catch up with the rest of the group – already climbing the spiral staircase leading up to the second floor – before Aubrey can ask him what drawing he’s talking about.

*

“Now off you go, call your parents if you must, and then straight to bed.”

The line to all the phones is too long for Aubrey to hope for so much as a goodnight from his mother before nine.

“Is Pigtails over there really telling her uncle about _macaron ornaments_?” Jerusalem says, resolved to stick to the line even though they’re at the tail end of it, and straining her neck as if it’ll help. “I need to call home and let Mother know I’m _alive_ , and she’s droning on and on about Beaux-Arts—”

“It’s ma- _s_ -caron,” Aubrey corrects, too quiet for Jerusalem to hear.

The girl in question is a bony redhead, clutching the phone like a lifeline and talking fast but exhaustively, people behind her yelling at her to hurry up.

Aubrey gives up and leaves the line. It’s still raining outside, umbrella weather, and he rubs his tie between his fingers. From tomorrow onwards, he won’t be allowed to wear it with his uniform.

A few feet away, someone screeches as Easy bites them to get ahead of them in the line. Aubrey shakes his head, and wonders who he has, to want to call them this badly, then feels guilty about it.

The tour didn’t include the library, and Aubrey stays in his room after nine and doesn’t sneak out because it won’t do to break the rules his very first day at Wilgefortis, or any day, for that matter. It’s the hardest thing he’s ever had to keep himself from doing, and when he gets up after a few hours of fitful sleep, long before breakfast, his pulse is rabbit-quick. He walks quietly through the corridors, not touching any of the sculptures on his way past but glancing at each and every one of them because it seems rude not to acknowledge them.

He ignores how most of them seem to be staring right back.

He doesn’t stop to stare at _Seascope, Folkestone_ , either, but he does say hello to _The Blue Rider_ from his mother.

Alfred the librarian blinks at him sleepily when Aubrey pushes the heavy oak door ajar and slips inside.

“I only opened just a minute ago—” Alfred the librarian says, a vest on but a bathrobe slung over the back of his chair. His glasses are askew, and he has patches of stubble all over his face. There’s a razor blade on his desk and Aubrey takes care to pretend not to have noticed it.

The library makes Aubrey think of chapels, cold stone and wooden shelves for pews, leather-bound books like something old enough to open on a psalm.

“Is it alright if I have a look around?” he says, trying to sound apologetic, and Alfred the librarian makes an aborted gesture with his hand and shrugs, smiling meekly. Aubrey nods and then walks between the shelves, and remembers reading another interview with December Graham, _I saw her and couldn’t look away._

When he gets to the back of the library where sunlight pours into the room through the arched stained-glass windows, a kaleidoscope of colours, all of them trying to be gold, he sits down cross-legged on the cold floor and props his chin on his hands.

 _Dora Maar au Chat_ hangs between two windows, framed black and worth any and all diagrams.

His mother says that love is having but Aubrey knows that to love is to look.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The paintings I refer to in this story are mostly privately-owned, cause, like, I'm not gonna write Mona Lisa out of Louvre, but everything is, of course, inaccurate. For instance, Dora Maar au Chat was sold in New York in 2006 to.... someone? And this story starts in 98'. I only want it to be a little plausible. This story will be many things, but realistic ain't it. 
> 
> Also, boarding schools in UK. I just don't know how they work. My knowledge on the subject comes from Harry Potter. I spent 2 hours googling it and still don't know. I spent 2 /years/ living in UK and /still/ don't know. So this will defnitely be inaccurate at times but it's not that important. 
> 
> Thank you for reading, if you got this far <333


	3. absentee bid

John William Waterhouse, _Ophelia_  


*

Gently, she leads you out into the darkness

and makes you drink rain.

~Patricia Smith, _Prologue—And Then She Owns You_

* **  
**

It started with ducks.

“You have to know how to kill something,” Aubrey’s mother told him on his tenth birthday. “Even if you end up never killing anything, you still have to know.”

She liked shooting birds, trekking near the grounds of their house with a rifle and, somehow, humming a lullaby to herself without making a sound. The one time she took Aubrey along, he could see it on her lips even if he couldn’t hear it, and he pressed the tip of his tongue to the roof of his mouth to keep himself from making a sound.

He didn’t want to kill anything, but it had been a relief to be told to tag along. He hated her going alone every other week. The area they lived in was all wet meadows, flooding after rains and full of easy-to-miss ponds, and he always imagined her falling into one and getting stabbed to death by ducks, a biblical revenge of a sort.

“Mercy is fine,” she whispered, leading him through grass grown long, “but only after the kill.”

He knew what she meant because he’d seen her bringing dead birds home, something loving about how she’d handle them, as if she hadn’t put a bullet through their hollowed bones at all.

“There is, of course, nothing more cruel than this. Poor dears, flying God knows where, flying in the first place, a bugger off to gravity, pardon, and then you hit them with it, and it doesn’t matter where they were going, because just then, they’re only going down.”

Aubrey couldn’t figure out if it was a life lesson, almost said something about not having wings, only hands, only arms, just a boy, can we go home?

His mother had a lot of love to give, but she loved like an army officer, bandaging your wounds after battles rather than preventing you from getting them in the first place.

“There’s power in it, Aubrey. Your father couldn’t shoot a duck from five feet away, you know.”

Aubrey’s father considered hunting uncivilized, and the only shoes he owned that were not pure leather, Italian, and for banquets, were various pairs of loafers.

Aubrey was too small to shoot a bird himself, but his mother stood behind him, had him hold the rifle, and helped.

He doesn’t remember anything she taught him that day. He doesn’t remember the quack of the bird, and he doesn’t remember how it dropped to the ground. He doesn’t remember the feel of metal under his fingers, and he doesn’t remember how one feather fell to the ground long after the bird had, lullaby-slow.

He remembers that everything around was Ida Rentoul Outhwaite lovely, and he remembers a sky so white that it was more a lack of one.

He remembers, later, a drop of blood on his finger, and how he kept seeing it even after he’d washed it off.

He remembers feeling something in the back of his throat, too, something that wouldn’t be swallowed down or coughed up.

He remembers feeling dirty.

For _days._

He remembers seeing a picture of _Dora Maar au Chat_ in a book, and how she was all pieces, but proud about it, regal and smiling. Look at me, like something broken, but not.

It helped him feel clean. No drop of blood on his finger, not anymore, no red in the corner of his eye that would disappear whenever he tried to face it.

She was asking, am I not beautiful?

She _was_.

*

He read about the auction in a newspaper, and years later, he still has the clipping.

He still has the train ticket, too.

*

“Asceticism?” his mother said when he perfected his story. He hated lying to her because it made him think of—

Duck blood, washed clean, aren’t pieces lovely?

“It’s an experiment,” he said, not daring to look away. His mother had this habit of watching someone like an animal would, as if ready to— ready to _something_. “I have to stay locked up in my room, no food, no water, no movement, no conversation. One day, that’s all.”

She agreed even though she clearly thought it strange because she was a firm believer in experiments.

Aubrey’s father wouldn’t even notice.

When he was on the train later, his bicycle left in the bushes somewhere, it occurred to Aubrey that she might have known, and let him do it, anyway. He was sharing a compartment with two old ladies talking about shopping and complaining about their husbands, and they kept shooting him curious glances, but they didn’t try talking to him.

London was huge, and so was Aubrey’s map. It was hard to find a spot where he could unfold it without someone swearing at him to get out of the way.

He knew he wouldn’t be allowed inside the building where the auction was being held, but he was happy with standing outside on the curb and knowing she was being sold only a few walls away.

He hoped people would bid a lot.

He hoped he’d be able to see her one day.

He thought he probably wouldn’t be.

People in expensive clothes started filing inside quarter to, women wearing high heels and hats, men in suits. A kid his age was crying, dragged inside by a lady in a camel coat.

He saw December Graham for the first time there, too, though he didn’t know it was her at the time, or who she was in the first place. The back of her head, and the lilac dress he would recognize in a newspaper photo later, a flash of a smile like a metal hook with something already caught on it.

His mother shooting ducks miles away, and all that blood.

“Auctum,” he said to himself, stupidly. “Latin for ‘I increase’.”

It was windy, and he was cold in his ugly, green jumper.

Cold, but clean.

*

Years later, he stared at his mother’s Persian carpet, took a breath, and said:

“I want to go to Wilgefortis.”

He had gone bird hunting with his mother, _again_ , a drop of duck blood on his finger, _again_ , and he forced himself to lick it off.

He could feel it then, somewhere inside him, like something faulty that would hurt.

When his father asked to see the diagrams, Aubrey could feel it dissolve.

Now, he stares up at _Dora Maar au Chat_ and loves her until Alfred the librarian tells him to go eat breakfast, looks and looks and won’t look away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For some reason, I feel like either no one will read this, or someone will yell at me for writing it O.O


	4. nights of endless sleeplessness, october 1998

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> wherein nobody can sleep, a painting is moved, and moon shavings are explained

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If the title reminds you of that Celine Dion song, it's because it's supposed to. Well, not really. I mean, the song always makes me laugh, but it does kind of apply to the story, or rather will, eventually. Except for the 'endless pleasure' bit because there's not much pleasure in it.

Bernadette O’Sullivan, _Bed_

* **  
**

‘Don’t you think it’s strange that life, described as so rich and full, a camel-trail of adventure, should shrink to this coin-sized world? A head on one side, a story on the other. Someone you loved and what happened. That’s all there is when you dig in your pockets.’

~Jeanette Winterson, _Written on the Body_

*

“You should talk to him,” Regina tells him over breakfast toast, staring at Easy’s empty seat. “He listens to you.”

Aubrey shoots her a doubtful look. He wouldn’t say that Easy _listens_ to him. He supposes it’s just harder for Easy to argue his way out of at least considering Aubrey’s suggestions, thanks to all the years of Aubrey’s father’s drilling when it comes to rhetoric, arguments, and points of reference.

So yes, sometimes Easy will sigh and take Aubrey’s suggestions to heart, but that’s only when he bothers to hear Aubrey out long enough for Aubrey to come forward with those. Usually, Easy’s too busy yelling at someone, getting into fights with Jerusalem, doodling all over Quickly’s textbooks, and pretending to hate everyone to listen to Aubrey.

(He doesn’t doodle in his own books, since they’re provided by the school on December Graham’s special request, and only adds moustaches to the historical figures’ photos, anyway, strangely creative, some of them braided, others with ribbons, thick or Orwell-style-thin, curled up or slumping down, symmetrical or like the pointers of a clock at quarter to four).

This is the third breakfast Easy’s missed in a row.

“He does listen to you,” Regina says, stubborn. “I mean it.”

At first, Aubrey thought Regina Stranger shy, but he’s come to understand that she’s merely quiet, and that the two aren’t always synonymous. Last week, one of their teachers had them pass a piece of paper with their name on it around. Everyone had to think of one outstanding quality of each classmate and write it down on the person’s sheet, and ‘friendliness’, ‘kindness’ and ‘a good sense of humour’ were not allowed. It took Aubrey a while to think of one for Reggie, Easy urging him to hurry up, because ‘kindness’ seemed most appropriate, but in the end, he settled for ‘integrity’, and has only been proven right ever since.

On Aubrey’s own card, someone wrote ‘who?’ right next to his name.

“What is he doing, anyway?” Aubrey says, and Regina frowns and gives him a look. “Well, _who_ knows, then?”

“You would, if you asked him,” she says simply, busying herself with cutting her fried eggs into squares. She claims that she can’t enjoy a meal properly unless it’s cut into bites beforehand.

Aubrey sighs, and gets up, calculating how much time he has before classes. He finds Easy right away, still in his dormitory, wrapped in a towel, hair wet and even more springy than usual. Aubrey resists the urge to touch it and test the bounciness, and notes that Easy’s wearing Quickly’s favourite socks, white with old Volkswagens printed all over. He looks strange straight out of the shower, his features more stark somehow, and his face the kind of pale that brings charcoal drawings that are nothing but contours to mind. Klimt’s _Portrait of a Young Woman_ , only a boy, or something like that.

There are small, red veins all over the whites of Easy’s eyes, and he looks like he’s not sleeping only because he’s too exhausted to, past drowsy and all twitching fingers.

“You haven’t slept, have you?” Aubrey says, perching on the edge of Easy’s bed. Easy scowls at him.

“None of your—”

“Yes, yes, I know,” Aubrey says hastily, and then offers Easy a piece of toast. “Here.”

Easy complains about not liking jam, but reluctantly accepts the toast and starts chewing on it in bird-bites.

“So why can’t you sleep?

Easy makes an offended noise, and a drop of water falls from a lock of his hair and onto the toast.

“Who said I can’t— Maybe I just don’t _want_ to sleep, have you thought of that?”

Aubrey has.

“You’re, er, dripping,” he points out meekly, and Easy glowers. It occurs to Aubrey that he might be taking such small bites so that he never has his mouth too full to start yelling insults left and right. “Do you even have anything on, under the towel?”

Easy arches an eyebrow.

“Why, are you going to take advantage?”

Aubrey gives him a look.

“What if you get a cold?”

“I’ll die for sure,” Easy says, matter-of-fact, adjusting the towel where it’s slid off his shoulder. “All orphans do, from pneumonia.”

Easy is in the habit of reminding people that he’s an orphan in order to make them feel uncomfortable, which, in a school full of kids whose parents drive Jaguars and vacation on the _Côte d’Azur,_ is an easily accomplished feat.

The delight with which Easy does it is obscene.

“Pneumonia wouldn’t kill you,” Aubrey assures him. “You must have strong lungs, to be able to yell so.”

Easy gives him a disgruntled look but doesn’t argue like he would with the others. Aubrey figures it’s because he’s not enough of a challenge, all cardigans and boring anecdotes about long-dead artists that Easy always rolls his eyes at. Regina claims it’s because Easy _likes_ him, but that would imply that he hates the rest of them, and why would he, when, for all his complaining, he trots after them everywhere.

Easy busies himself with the toast, swinging his legs, eyebrows drawn low in anger but some rare tranquillity in the way he slouches quiet otherwise, and Aubrey wonders if that’s what he’s like when no one’s looking.

Being with Aubrey must be like being alone, after all.

He starts catching the drops of water falling from Easy’s locks with his fingers, and Easy doesn’t bark at him or bat his hand away, which only further proves Aubrey’s point, really.

He wonders what else he could do that wouldn’t earn him a reaction, if, for instance, he’d get away with telling Easy that sometimes he doesn’t sleep, either. He’s about to try it when Kipp wanders in without knocking, blinking at them like he didn’t expect to find them inside, even though Easy must be the reason why he came here in the first place.

“Have you run out of clothes, or what?” he asks, crossing the room, and pokes Easy’s collarbone. Easy bares his teeth like an angry Rottweiler, and Kipp frowns at his finger like he’s trying to decide if another poke is worth the risk of having it bitten. “Classes start in five, Sleeping Ugliness.”

He starts energetically towelling Easy’s hair, ignorant of the loud protests and complaints, and flashes Aubrey a radiant smile, all teeth like toothpaste commercials.

They did all stick together, in the end. The first week of school Kipp would sit everywhere with Easy’s roommates instead, but, one day, when Aubrey dropped a book, Kipp picked it up for him, open on a picture of Joseph-Désiré Court’s _Rigolette_ , and stared at it for a while, his grip on the book tight, as if he was loath to give it back. After that, he started eating meals with them and would sit next to Aubrey in class, smiling politely when stealing others’ desks, those white teeth so even that the kids would smile right back and pick a different row.

He never mentions _Rigolette_ , but Aubrey knows it was the painting that did it, and wonders if it’s a mere coincidence that in newspaper photos December Graham looks just like the woman in the picture.

It takes a moment for Easy to calm down and stop calling Kipp a doorknob-licker and a mouse-droppings-sniffer, but he goes quiet eventually, voice hoarse as if he’s worn himself out. Aubrey can’t imagine how he’ll get through the whole day if his vocal cords have already had it.

Kipp calls Easy a good boy when he manages to stay silent for a full minute and gives him a pat on the head. Easy glares at him and lets out a sound that’s more gurgle than growl, but Kipp has enough sense not to laugh.

Aubrey watches them, chin in his hand, and catches himself with his finger fit almost between his lips, the water from Easy’s hair cold. He wipes his mouth off with the back of his hand and then starts making Easy’s bed, just to have something to do with himself. Easy’s dormitory is more cluttered than his own, the other boys’ stuff all over even right before the morning inspections, heaps of clothes, piles of colourful magazines, and the remnants of a card house in the middle of the room. Easy’s corner of the room looks tidy but sad in comparison, and the few things he has are the kind of bric-à-brac people only collect when they’re desperate to have. There’s a piece of a dessert plate Quickly broke last week on the windowsill, a pink ribbon Aubrey recognizes as Jerusalem’s pinned to the headboard of Easy’s bed, and a bird feather stuck inside a paperback like a bookmark. Apart from that, Easy’s taped black-and-white pictures all over the wall, and Aubrey recognizes them as having come from a newspaper he dug out of the trash two weeks before, angry politicians photographed mid-sentence and celebrities with blow-dried hair. There’s a potted plant, too, stolen from one of the classrooms, leaves dry and curling yellow but a puddle of water spilled around it indicating that Easy must have at least tried to revive it.

Lat week, when they all sprawled on the grass outside the school building, Easy found a dead frog and picked it up by the leg, much to Quickly’s horror, scrutinizing it like he was considering keeping it. Aubrey made him wash his hands twice, after, and thought of giving Easy his Outhwaite tie, but couldn’t quite bring himself to. It was a gift, after all. Three days later, Reggie knitted Easy a pair of mittens even though it was still warm outside, and Easy clutched them tight in a white-knuckled grip, cradled close to his chest, and stared at her hopelessly, like he didn’t quite know what to do with himself now he had something and wanted more still.

He reminds Aubrey of a magpie that way, unable to keep himself from stealing little trinkets and dutifully bringing them back to his corner of the building to complement his humble hoard. It’s quite heart-breaking, if one thinks about it too much, so Aubrey makes sure to only think about it a little.

“I hate everybody,” Easy says at some point, and he sounds world-weary enough that Kipp laughs, tugging playfully at a lock of his hair. Easy screeches and bats his hand away, hitting it for longer than necessary, as if he’s testing for something. Aubrey doesn’t say anything, only stares at Easy’s knobby knees. He has scars on each of them, both smile-shaped, only one upside-down. Jerusalem called it ‘mood knees’ and accidentally discovered a way of shutting Easy up mid-rant when she dragged her finger over one of the scars and he started writhing, ticklish.

In the end, Easy never tells them why he can’t sleep, and Aubrey writes down possible reasons and potential solutions on a lined sheet of paper later, and makes a diagram, too, but he ends up never bringing it up again.

He thinks that Easy would try to scowl if he saw that Aubrey bothered, but wouldn’t quite manage to, and the possibility upsets Aubrey so much that he tears the list to pea-sized pieces, scoops them up and puts them in the fireplace. He covers them up with a chunk of wood and watches them already smoulder.

*

December Graham comes to Wilgefortis in the first week of October, stepping over chestnuts in her leather Oxfords, and rumour has it she’s here to stay. All healthy now, only took a month, no matter that it was supposed to be nothing serious, and Aubrey knew this about her, art classes she insists on giving herself, but knew it was only Fridays, too.

It’s not only Fridays now, according to their new timetable. It is once a week, yes, but on a different day for each year, and December Graham’s there at breakfast on Monday, smiling at her toast and to stay indeed.

There’s no speech, but she waves at Quickly when she catches him staring, amused, as if they know each other. Quickly ducks his head, forgets that he was in the middle of taking a sip of milk, and mumbles something about getting expelled, the liquid dripping down his chin and soaking his collar.

“To stay,” Kipp repeats numbly after Jerusalem, and fishes a fly out of his tea, his movements strangely robotic. He puts the fly away and covers it up with a napkin, out of sight, out of mind, and continues drinking the tea. “What about how she has a mansion and a husband and a fortune?”

“She said she’d ‘missed her oldest friends’, apparently,” Regina says, tapping her lip with her finger. “She said that her and The Duchess of Alba haven’t had a talk in months.”

“She came here for _Duchalba_?” Easy says, incredulous, and Jerusalem makes a show of wiping spittle off her face across from him. Duchalba is Easy’s nickname for _The White Duchess_ , and he insists on referring to her as such, no matter how much Aubrey pleads for him to stop. In fact, the more Aubrey pleads, the worse it gets, because Easy’s contrary enough that it gives him ideas, and so, as of last week, he’s christened the duchess’s dog Colin the Second. Nobody dared asked who in heaven’s name Colin the First was, and Easy didn’t bother to explain unprompted.

“She sure didn’t come here _for you_ ,” Jerusalem teases, and, for a second, Easy looks genuinely stung. He shakes out of it fast, though, gasping as he always does before launching into one of his rants.

“I wouldn’t want her to, gross, she’s all eyebrows, elbows, absolutely awful,” he says, eloquently. “I don’t even _like_ her.”

“You owe her your entire education,” Kipp points out, watching December Graham across the room, even though he has to crane his neck to be able to do so.

“I’ve only been here for a month,” Easy protests. “I haven’t had enough things educated to me to be grateful.”

“Your English being a testament to that,” Jerusalem says, and yelps when Easy – presumably – kicks her under the table.

Easy, too, keeps craning his neck to stare at December Graham, and Aubrey would swap seats with him to save him the impending neck spasm, only he needs the good view himself, not to watch Wilgefortis’s benefactress, but to stare at the painting now hanging where _Apollo The Lute Player_ used to be only months ago, the rectangle of faded wall paint covered anew.

December Graham brought Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s _The Laundress_ with her, and, according to Alfred the librarian (who sees Aubrey often enough that he always offers him biscuits in spite of Aubrey’s continued polite refusals) insisted on putting it on the wall herself.

“She knows best how to handle a painting,” Alfred the librarian told Aubrey just this morning, and Aubrey broke his routine and accepted one biscuit in the hope that it’d keep Alfred talking for longer. “You can say a lot of things about Mrs. Graham, but she always knows what to do when there’s a work of art involved.”

All of them stealing glances at this strange woman with big ears and a mischievous smile, something regal about her now, something schoolgirl about her then, and she herself stealing glances at _The Laundress_ , a sad smile like she’s thinking that her and Apollo would have liked each other.

Aubrey smiles sadly himself, thinks so, too.

Later the very same day she takes over their lesson for a quarter of an hour, climbing atop the desk in a yellow summer dress.

“Carmen Gaudin,” she explains about _The Laundress_. “She was a prostitute.”

She proceeds to tell them that Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec had several health conditions, bones growing wrong, as a result of inbreeding. A strange boy that couldn’t play with others, and no wonder he took up painting, no wonder at all.

She smiles and cocks her head the way Aubrey’s mother does when she spots birds taking flight and plans to shoot one.

“Prostitutes and alcohol, so called _Tremblement de Terre_ , half-cognac, half-absinthe, cane hollowed out and filled with liquor, such a miserable man, and still, I’m quite happy about the incest myself,” she says, fingers tapping the edge of the desk, silently, nails cut short. “It’s why I have the painting now, after all.”

She tells them that she’s tried _Tremblement de Terre_ , and quite liked it, and Aubrey understands what people mean when they say that her teaching is unorthodox.

Next to him, Kipp’s fingers are dancing on top of his notebook, fluttering motions as if he’s about to grab for something, only there’s nothing to grab in reach.

On Aubrey’s other side, Easy is watching December Graham with a disapproving frown, gripping the edge of his desk tightly, as if he’s waiting for her to stare back.

She never does.

“Anyway,” she muses at some point, smiling out the window instead of looking at them, as if there’s something there besides a forever of meadows. “I don’t care if all those artists were miserable. If that’s what made them paint lovely things, then so be it.”

Aubrey knows he’ll always remember her saying it.

After the lesson, everyone files outside, Kipp strangely quiet and Easy near offended. Aubrey’s about to follow when a soft voice says, hey, you. He considers pretending he hasn’t heard but ends up turning around. December Graham raises her eyebrows and crooks her finger at him until he comes close, the room already empty, and Aubrey’s bag strap digging into his shoulder, uncomfortable.

“What’s your name, then?”

“Aubrey Allen,” he says, keeping himself from adjusting the bag strap. “Ma'am.”

She smiles, amused.

“Say, Aubrey, how’s the little one doing?” she says, tilting her head towards the door. Aubrey follows her gaze, even though there’s no one there.

“Eas— Ezra, you mean?”

“The very one,” she admits, legs swinging. She’s kicked off her shoes at some point and would look more like a classmate than a teacher if it weren’t for the lines of her face, disciplined, as if she’d told them to align in a certain way decisively enough for them to listen rather than was born with them. “I’d ask him myself but I don’t think he likes me very much. Not yet, anyway.”

She smiles like she likes a good challenge, and Aubrey imagines she must, if she’s drunk absinthe and travelled all over the world to auction for paintings with money that wasn’t hers.

“He’s something else,” she continues, pushing her hair behind her ears. On anyone else, it’d seem a nervous gesture but, on her, it’s strangely honest and matter-of-fact. “The others were quiet, you know?”

Everyone knows about December Graham’s orphans, the younger, the more wide-eyed, one in each year, worn sweaters and no plans for Christmas, top students, almost all of them, like they’re scared someone will pull the rug from under their feet when they least expect it and need to be as close to perfect as possible to make sure they’ll be allowed to stay. All of them looking out for each other even if they’re not friends, a fifteen-year-old girl checking up on Easy sometimes, feeling his forehead of all things, like she always expects him to fall ill, and a sixteen-year-old boy smuggling him candy in the corridors.

“He’s loud as a kettle,” Aubrey says, and December Graham snorts a laugh. He feels wary, not scared of her, per se, so much as scared of her seeing right through him and guessing how much he loves something of hers. He imagines her finding him in the library one day, staring at Dora Maar and struggling to look away, and knows he’ll have to stop going there so often, now that December Graham’s here.

“Has he told you anything about the moon?”

Aubrey stares at her, confused, and then shakes his head. She makes a worried face and hums thoughtfully.

“Nevermind that,” she says, glancing at a watch she doesn’t have, tapping her wrist. “It’s only October, I suppose.”

She smiles at him one last time, jumps off the desk, makes too much noise for someone barefoot and so slight when she lands, and then walks out of the room, leaving her shoes behind. Aubrey stares at them for a moment, and then lines them up neatly, the leather inside still warm.

Later, he tries finding Easy, but no luck.

*

“Can you tell him something, _please_?” Michael Crosby whines, sat on Aubrey’s bed and gesticulating with his hands so vividly that since the start of his rant, Aubrey’s moved to the other end of the bed to avoid getting slapped in the face. “Soon, we’re going to have to clean the second-floor bathrooms _again_ , all because that idiot wants to cuddle an _onion_!”

Michael is one of the boys who share Easy’s dormitory, and Aubrey would very much like to offer him tea and advise him to calmly think it all through, but something tells him that the level of Michael’s agitation calls for immediate action.

He refrains from pointing out that Michael’s corner of the dormitory is usually the most cluttered spot in the room. After all, dirty socks have nothing on rotting onions.

The onion is one of those sad Easy quirks that Aubrey tries to forget about on a daily basis in order to stay sane. He sighs now and gets up, dusting off his trousers.

“Come along, then,” he says, and Michael does, finally going quiet. Michael’s father has a theatre in London, and Aubrey wonders if it somehow translates to Michael’s proneness to dramatics. He has a very loud voice, as if he’s never grown out of having to scream for milk, and for some unfathomable reason, he seems to think that Easy listens to Aubrey.

In their dormitory, Easy’s sat cross-legged on his bed, trying to thread a needle, his eyebrows meeting in the middle in concentration. The offensive object is placed in his lap, half fallen-apart and looking like a pagan ritual gone wrong.

Aubrey knows the story only because he’s insignificant enough that he was allowed to listen in on the conversation when Easy reluctantly recounted it to Regina the other day. It was part of the arts and crafts initiative at Easy’s orphanage – they were given scraps of fabrics and sewing supplies and were meant to make a doll. Easy, it soon turned out, couldn’t sew at all, or, as he put it, ‘the cotton was stupid, and the needles were all wrong, and I had better things to do, anyway.’ He ended up wrapping a potato sack around a big onion and tied it with a string, the rest of the fabric spreading in an A-shape like a dress. He then painted a red gash for a mouth on the thing’s head and added two mismatched buttons for eyes, one held loosely on a pink thread, dangling awkwardly, the other secured with duct-tape. The result was an ugly thing bringing horror film props to mind that Easy named named Georgie the Second.

Neither Aubrey nor Regina asked who Georgie the First was, but Aubrey was sure that they’d both noticed the pattern.

Apparently, the fabric finally gave last night, revealing growing mold, and Easy, to his roommates’ horror, refused to throw the thing away, intent on repairing it instead.

“Easy,” Aubrey starts, settling next to him and ignoring Michael’s annoyed huffs. “Are those Regina’s supplies?”

Easy doesn’t reply, but his frown deepens, which is enough of an answer.

“And why would you try and mend it yourself instead of asking Reggie to help you?” Aubrey says, trying for genuinely curious rather than patronizing. He’s come to understand that the more wound-up Easy seems, the nicer one has to be when approaching him, in order to keep him from biting one’s head off.

“She wouldn’t do it for me,” Easy grumbles. “She’d say that I should get rid of the onion.”

“Well, then, surely you can see that she’d have a point there,” Aubrey says. Easy growls. Aubrey doesn’t look away when Easy glares at him, because he’s pretty sure that as soon as he did, Easy would prick him with the needle just to be spiteful. Now, he’s too busy trying to outstare Aubrey to bother.

“You can’t keep it,” Aubrey says, softly. “Mould’s not good for you.”

“It’s not good for our dormitory’s cleaning record,” Michael says from across the room. Aubrey raises a hand to get him to shut up without looking away from Easy.

“It doesn’t even _smell_ ,” Easy whines.

“It does, too!” Michael says, and Aubrey sighs, regretting not having offered the tea after all.

“I made it myself,” Easy mumbles, stubborn but strangely quiet, gripping Georgie the Second so tight that the knobs of his fingers go white.

“You can make another,” Aubrey says, and Easy glowers at him like he doesn’t understand anything. Aubrey’s starting to think that he really doesn’t.

“How about we ask Regina what she thinks about it all instead of assuming?” Aubrey suggests, and Easy sighs, resigned.

Five minutes later, Regina examines Georgie with a serious face, and then gives a brisk nod.

“I’ll take care of it,” she assures them and then slams the door in their faces.

“I know she’ll throw it away,” Easy says in a monotone voice, staring at his socks. He tends to walk all over the school without his shoes on, which means that the bottoms of all his – and half of Quickly’s – white socks are perpetually stained black. Aubrey always warns him that he’ll catch his death, Easy always ignores it, and Regina still insists that he listens to Aubrey. Ha. “Do you think I’m stupid, or something?”

“No,” Aubrey says, and doesn't dare pat Easy on the shoulder. “I don’t.”

*

The first time Aubrey sneaks out of his room at night, he feels bad enough about it to reconsider halfway to the library, and almost goes back to bed, guilt sitting in his stomach like curdled milk.

What would his father say?

The library is, of course, closed, the door long locked, but even sitting with his back to it and knowing that Dora Maar is just one room away, and not on the other end of the building, helps him breathe.

There’s a draught in the corridor, cold air tickling his ankles, and Aubrey pretends that he’s invisible – he’s quite good at it, in spite of being tall for his age – until he almost believes that he’s not there at all.

Still, the guilt.

In the morning, he has a headache and keeps getting lost in his thoughts during classes, ignoring the discussion about Macbeth’s Three Witches. He stares at the strange, frantic sketch drawn in white chalk on the wall painted a mouldy green, elongated figures with round eyes gripping their heads. They remind him of _The Scream_ but, somehow, of angels, too, even though they have no teeth and no wings.

It was drawn by one of the patients back when Wilgefortis was still a mental hospital, and apparently December Graham insisted on not only keeping the drawings but on holding lessons here, too. A few days back, they all filed into the classroom, only to find her sitting on one of the desks, staring at the sketch, silent. She wouldn’t even look over her shoulder when they spilled inside, all stomping and loud hoots, only kept on staring until she dusted off her skirt after a minute, saluted, and left.

Quickly says that the drawing gives him nightmares, and Jerusalem once tried to smear the edge of it with her finger and tasted the chalk. Regina tends to stare at it for a moment before she crosses the doorstep every time, as if to acknowledge it, something respectful about it, and Easy called it ugly doodles once, but he was frowning thoughtfully when he said it. Kipp always makes fun of it, and Aubrey himself hates it.

It looks like whoever drew it was in pain, and for Aubrey, there’s not much difference between the sketch and a dried bloodstain.

Well, except for art, of course.

“Would you say that the witches are agents of fate, Mr. Allen?” the teacher addresses him, and Aubrey clears his throat and replies, prepared even when he hasn’t been listening.

Next to him, Easy frowns, confused, and Aubrey knows that he’ll puzzle over his notes later and refuse to ask for help.

He’ll refuse the help itself, too, but Aubrey will offer anyway.

“Very well,” the teacher says when Aubrey’s done, the people in the drawing screaming and screaming.

*

“Here,” Regina says, three days after the onion fiasco. “All fixed.”

Easy blinks at Georgie the Second, and then pokes it as if to make sure it’s really there. He takes it from Reggie, turning it this way and that.

“I’ve washed it, that’s why the lips are a bit, er, blurry.”

It’s a grave understatement. Georgie the Second now has a red stain for a mouth, but at least its left eye is no longer dangling, attached securely to the head.

The head, which gives when Easy presses on it with his fingers.

“I stuffed it with feathers,” Reggie explains. “It’s softer, but at least it won’t rot or give you bruises when you roll over onto it at night.”

Easy forgets to thank her, too busy staring at the doll.

“You’re welcome,” Regina says, anyway, and Aubrey follows her back to her room, even though, as a boy, he’s technically not allowed inside. He doesn’t feel that it applies, because he thinks of Regina as a recently met cousin rather than a girl.

“And where on Earth did you get feathers from?” he asks, and Regina sighs as if she knows there’s no use lying. She waves her hand at the wooden wardrobe she shares with Jerusalem, and when Aubrey opens it, a tangle of stockings spills out onto the floor. A the bottom of the wardrobe, there’s a mess of feathers and a butchered pillow.

“I haven’t had a chance to mend it yet, but I will, and no one will be the wiser,” Regina tells him. “It’s a little less fluffy now, but I don’t mind. It’s better for the neck like this, anyway.”

Aubrey shakes his head and smiles.

Later, Easy is calmer than Aubrey’s seen him in weeks, but the next day he misses breakfast anyway.

*

Aubrey makes sure to sneak out at night only every other day, as if that makes it any better, and bumps into Easy the third time he does it.

Easy’s sitting cross-legged in the corridor, back to the balustrade, staring at Monet’s _Open Sea_ , chin in hands.

“Shut up,” he says in lieu of a greeting, but no feeling behind it, like he’s only saying it to get it over and done with. “What are _you_ doing here, anyway? Aren’t you too proper to be breaking the rules like this?”

Aubrey sighs and settles down next to him. It’s a strange feeling, seeing someone committing the same sin he’s been committing himself, and he tries not to feel jealous of how Easy can at least look at the Monet. There’s enough moonlight filtering in through the windows that Aubrey can make out the smaller sailing ships in the picture, but he suspects that Easy only cares about the sea itself anyway.

_We met on a boat, your father and I._

“Do you want to be there?” Aubrey asks, nodding at the painting, and Easy sniffles and rubs his nose. Aubrey doesn’t think he’s crying, just cold, trousers worn and too short as if he’s had them for years, the little hair he has on his arms standing on end.

“I don’t want to be _anywhere_ ,” Easy mumbles, cradling his head in his arms, and it’s such a sad little thing that Aubrey feels a strange sensation of something inside him coming loose and lodging somewhere it will be an uncomfortable obtrusion.

Aubrey forgets all about the library and he and Easy sneak into the kitchens downstairs to drink some cold milk.

“I mean, if I had to go somewhere,” Easy says, toes curling on the cold floor, “I suppose I wouldn’t mind going there.”

Wilgefortis is not near the coast. Easy’s checked, after all.

*

Two nights later, Easy’s there again, staring at the painting the way brainwashed kids stare at the television.

“Does it help you sleep?”

“Does it look like I’m sleeping?” Easy says, grumpy, but nods anyway. “It would, maybe, not that I need any help, thank you very much.”

Aubrey smiles and joins him on the cold floor.

They don’t hear the click of heels soon enough to run away and hide, because December Graham never wears those at school.

“Oh?” she says when she stumbles upon them, candle in hand like it’s a Victorian novel and torches haven’t been invented yet. They both jump, and Easy pales.

“Let me explain,” Aubrey says, panicked, even though there’s no good enough explanation for this. He’s about to tell her that Easy’s been coughing and that they were on their way to the kitchen for some tea, only Aubrey has lost his contact lenses, why _yes_ , he _does_ wear those, _no_ , no need to confirm it with his parents, but December Graham raises her hand to keep him from speaking.

“There’s no need,” she says, sharp. “I understand perfectly.”

Next to Aubrey, Easy’s shaking like something sick.

“We don’t mind any punishment that you consider appropriate—” Aubrey starts, and December Graham laughs as he’s halfway through it, a startled sound.

“Don’t be daft,” she says, like they’re friends. She raises the candle up and tilts her head, examining the Monet. “Lovely, isn’t it? We fought over it so hard at that damned auction, Polly Palmer and I. We would each go ten quid over the other’s offer until she called me an affectated tart and I slapped her with my paddle. It was all very spectacular because a tooth fell right out of her mouth and sailed across the room in this _beautiful_ arc, but later she told me that it’d been coming loose for a while. She even shook my hand in the end, too.”

“Oh,” Easy breathes, eyes wide. “Did you keep the tooth?”

December Graham grins.

“I did, too,” she admits. “A war trophy.”

“I can’t sleep,” Easy confesses, and she smiles at him fondly.

“I know, kid, but go back to bed now anyway, alright?”

When she promises Easy that she’ll sort it out, Aubrey doesn’t know what she means by ‘it’, but he knows that she sounds just like Regina did when she promised to take care of Easy’s doll.

*

When they’re walking back to their dormitories after classes the next day, _Open Sea_ is no longer hanging in the first-floor corridor. Easy stops mid-step and stares at the bare wall, crestfallen, no doubt thinking that it’s his punishment for sneaking out at night, but Aubrey knows better.

He leaves Easy there, looking like the world is ending, and takes steps to the third floor two at a time. Instead of going straight to his, he walks into Easy’s dormitory after a polite knock that goes unanswered, and there it is, _Open Sea_ in all its glory hanging above Easy’s bed as though it always has.

“It’s rude to barge into somebody’s room without knocking,” Easy says behind him, out of breath.

“I did knock,” Aubrey says weakly.

“Sure, only me and Michael and Peter were all behind you and— Hey, is that— _Oh_.”

“Yes,” Aubrey agrees. “ _Oh_.”

Aubrey wonders who the hell December Graham is, a name like that, a story like hers, only what story, exactly? Bits and pieces.

And why does she act like she’d give Easy the world if he asked, even though she doesn’t really know him?

One orphan each year.

One painting each year.

A torn earlobe.

 _Apollo the Lute Player_ , sold away.

Will she sell Dora Maar, too?

That night, Aubrey is sure, Easy sleeps without having to count sheep and beat his pillow.

*

The day after, Aubrey is stupid enough to sneak out again, wary of the hue of a candle.

He puts his hand on the handle, even though he won’t be able to open the library door.

“You’ve got it bad, huh?” Easy says behind him and Aubrey doesn’t jump.

“She gave you the Monet,” Aubrey says, sharper than he’d like. He hates losing his temper more than anything, because— “Why sneak out after that?”

“The other day I asked what you were doing sneaking out in the middle of the night, and you never answered,” Easy tells him, socks soundless on the floor as he comes up close. “You were going somewhere that night, and the fact that you never got there doesn’t change anything.”

Aubrey tries to decide what he thinks of Easy here, in the dark, eyes accusing and hair blue-black in the moonlight, all stubborn collarbones. More than he doesn’t want Easy to know why he’s here, he didn't expect Easy to _want_ to know. These past few weeks, Easy has been something, sure, but a friend isn’t quite it. He’s precisely like a cat, moody, to be fed and taken care of, ready to bite and scratch if you aggravate him, and Aubrey realizes with a start and with no small amount of guilt that it never before occurred to him to consider that Easy might care about them at least a bit, in his own way.

That he’s, well, a _person_.

“So why do you like that stupid painting so much anyway?” Easy says, oblivious, tugging at the door handle like he expects to find it unlocked. He frowns when it doesn’t give, disappointed. “The cat’s alright, but the rest is just disgusting. The woman’s all snot-yellow, and looks like she’s been in one too many bar fights or something. And _those hands_.”

Aubrey finds it impossible to hate Easy just then, though not for lack of trying.

“She’s quite beautiful to me,” he says, feeling strangely shy.

“Alright,” Easy sighs. “Are you going to laborate on that?”

“It’s _e_ laborate,” Aubrey corrects, automatic. “And no.”

Easy shakes his head, puffs out his cheek, and gives him a strange look, a sort of what am I going to do with you? Aubrey slides down to the ground, resigned, and Easy joins him, those knobby knees of his drawn to his chest, two scars, smile, no smile.

It feels strange to be sitting with someone in an empty corridor, too dark to tell if the statues placed along it have their eyes open.

“Do you know about moon shavings?” Easy says, running his finger over the smiley scar on his right knee, and Aubrey thinks, ah.

“Moon shavings?” he repeats, and Easy smiles, wry.

“It’s something an older boy told me, back at the orphanage. I couldn’t sleep sometimes, because of the moon. It seemed so— I don’t know. Scary, I guess. Anyway, that boy told me all about it, how the moon peels off piece by piece, like shedding skin, or something. You know, when it goes from full to croissant?”

Aubrey nods because Easy seems to be waiting for an affirmation of a sort, frantically scratching at the scar on his knee even though Aubrey doubts it itches.

“He said it’s layers falling away, dropping to the ground, and that the moon is weak, ill, nothing to be afraid of. I said, ew, and he said, not ew at all, Easy, one day we’ll go look for them, those moon shavings, what do you say? It’s a nice dream to have, isn’t it, he said.”

Easy scratches his knee red, and there’s a lock of his hair springing forward that Aubrey just can’t stand to look at, because Easy should have someone who’d pat it down for him, but doesn’t, and Aubrey's not sure how to become that someone or if he even wants to. 

“So, anyway, I don’t believe in all that anymore. Santa Claus and Tooth Fairy and moon shavings, all lies, but that’s not why dreams don’t come true.”

Aubrey doesn’t tell him that he’s wrong, because he isn’t.

“They don’t come true because I made that _stupid_ — They don’t come true because she came see me with her pointy ankles and told me that I’d have a future, and I had to leave that boy there. So what does it matter if there are moon shavings or not, if we won’t ever go look for them anyhow?”

“If a tree falls in a forest,” Aubrey says, and Easy raises an eyebrow.

“A what in a what? There’s no forests here, dimwit.”

Aubrey tilts his head back until it hits the library door and laughs, almost loud enough that they should be worried.

“You’re quite right, you know,” he says. “Dreams don’t come true, which is just as well, because it means we’ll be prepared when ours don’t, no?”

Easy, wonder of wonders, smiles back.

Later, as they’re splitting up at Easy’s door, he frowns at Aubrey in the dark.

“What’s your dream, then? Are you ready for it to never come true?”

Aubrey thinks about it.

“It’s for the best if it doesn’t.”

He doesn’t explain, and Easy doesn’t ask.

*

“He’s talked to me about the moon,” Aubrey reports after class, watching December Graham unhurriedly gather her things. “Do you want me to tell you about it?”

It’s a relief when she shakes her head because he doesn’t think he’d have the heart to repeat what Easy told him, even though he offered himself.

He wonders if December Graham would hang _Dora Maar au Chat_ in Aubrey’s room if she knew he can’t sleep either, suspects she wouldn’t, resolves to never think about it again.

“He mentioned a drawing, once,” Aubrey tries, and December smiles, thin like a scratch.

“I visit many orphanages each year, you know,” she says, reaching under the neckline of her dress. Aubrey averts his eyes, and she chuckles, delighted. “I give the kids crayons and say, draw yourself doing what you’d most like to do.”

She takes out a small square of paper from the folds of her dress and unfolds it like a map.

“One boy drew himself drawing something, and I thought I’d pick him, but then I saw this.”

She hands him the drawing with a sharp look, as if trusting him to handle it properly is a risky investment, and Aubrey makes sure to hold it gently and by the edges, like he would a freshly-developed photograph.

“Oh,” he says, stupidly, then clears his throat. “Ea— Ezra drew this?”

“Twenty crayons in that box and he wouldn’t use any colour but black,” December Graham says, smiling fondly. “I swear, I saw this and knew that he’d love _Open Sea_ right away. I _needed_ him to see it, do you understand?”

Aubrey nods, because he does.

“And that other boy?”

December Graham stops smiling.

“Choices, choices, all my life I have to choose,” she says and plucks the drawing from his hands, folds it along wrong lines and shoves it back inside her dress. “One day, I’ll have all I want, no compromises.”

This time, when she walks away, she doesn’t leave her shoes behind.

*

“I want to post letters to the orphanage,” Easy announces the next day, shuffling his feet and scratching at his wrist. He stares at everything but Aubrey, and Aubrey resists the urge to ask him why he’s talking to the carpet.

“To that boy?” he guesses. “Moon shavings, and all that?”

“ _No_ ,” Easy says, vehement. “Not _him_.”

“Who, then?”

“There’s a mouse in a cupboard at the orphanage,” Easy explains, his wrist a furious red by now. Aubrey keeps himself from stilling his hand and puts away his notes to show that he’s listening. “Don’t you think the orphanage is dirty, or something, the ladies clean every day, and we do, too, only – The mouse’s name is Pepper.”

Aubrey stares.

“How are you going to post a letter to a mouse, though?”

“I know the address,” Easy grumbles. “L— The boy will read it to him.”

Him, huh? Easy sounds six rather than twelve, and Aubrey knows that he doesn’t want to send letters to a mouse at all, but decides to indulge him.

“Alright,” he says softly. “How can I help?”

“Who said I need your help—” Easy starts, finally looking straight at him, and then sighs, resigned. “I make spelling mistakes.”

He does, too. Aubrey’s seen his notes, all clumsy handwriting and good intentions, missing letters, letters that shouldn’t be there in the first place, and no punctuation. 

“You want me to proofread the letters, then?” he guesses, and Easy gives him an offended look. Aubrey waits for the anger to die down, watching a pink blush spread over Easy’s cheeks.

“Yes, that,” Easy admits grudgingly. “ _Please_.”

Aubrey smiles and agrees.

At night, he stays in his room and sleeps.


	5. dearest pepper, or letters of october 1998

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Easy writes letters, Aubrey ~~mansplains~~ corrects them, a passive-agressive exchange ensues.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, IMPORTANT IMPORTANT IMPORTANT. I had to become an amateur informatitian to do this, all converting word documents to pdf and then to images but alas, apparently one can't upload images from one's computer on here. I'm terrible at formatting or whatever you call that thing you do on here to make fancy fonts and colours appear, but it's okay because I uploaded the damned thing onto my google drive and have accessible-for-all links. Phew. 
> 
> So, basically, this chapter is technically not here but elsewhere. I'm sorry. 
> 
> Anyway, it's those letters Easy writes to his pet mouse (not really) and Aubrey corrects for him. It gets confusing later, so here's a step-by-step: 
> 
> first letter: Aubrey's corrections in red 
> 
> second letter: Aubrey's corrections in red
> 
> third letter: Aubrey's corrections in red, Easy's replies to his corrections in green
> 
> fourth letter: Aubrey's corrections in red, Easy's replies to his corrections in green, Aubrey's comments to that in red again, Easy in green again, Aubrey in red again 
> 
> fifth letter: never submitted for correction
> 
> Basically, Easy makes a ton of spelling mistakes but gets pissed-off when Aubrey dares point it out and then his spelling gets better because he feels stupid and pays more attention, but on the other hand, they keep passing the letters back and forth having a passive-agressive argument all over the poor things. Probably in class. Look, I don't know, either. I was bored. Hopefully it'll make sense. I had fun writing it. So anyway, links below, let me know if they don't work, one's word, one's pdf, I don't think it matters?

**https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hDpygduVKK9aqSOIqgAQky1P4LuA46K1/view**

**https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aN-VasjRbnmiUNojjAfUrVAuSeMIbREs/view**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading, and please, let me know if this was awful :,)


	6. the newsboy cap statement, october 1998

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein everyone hates Quickly's cap, Aubrey gains Easy's trust, and Jerusalem says Three Musketeers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're still stuck on October, 1998, but the story will speed up soon, I promise. It will still take them a while to grow up but it'll be only a few chapters per yer soon, and for a while. I still maintain that the main story will be later, later, when they're all grown-up. Anyway, I've done extensive research on newsboy caps before writing this, including sitting through multiple youtube videos, and I want to make something clear: when I say 'newsboy cap', I mean [this](https://www.amazon.com/ASVP-Shop-Newsboy-Cap-Gatsby/dp/B07L9V1MMD/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?dchild=1&keywords=newsboy+cap&qid=1602450808&sr=8-1-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUEzREEyRE9ERlpFQlpaJmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwMDA5NzQ0MU9FUzFZSldTMjFXSSZlbmNyeXB0ZWRBZElkPUExMDI3NDkyM1JJTDNXSkVHTk5YMCZ3aWRnZXROYW1lPXNwX2F0ZiZhY3Rpb249Y2xpY2tSZWRpcmVjdCZkb05vdExvZ0NsaWNrPXRydWU=) and not [this](https://connerhats.com/products/sinclair-gentlemans-cap) abomination
> 
> (Yes, it is important, shshsh) 
> 
> (Also, is 'newsboy cap' really the proper name? Who knows?) 
> 
> The painting for this chapter, Maskarada, is so funny, and in a way, fits so well. I loved it when I was, like, 10, and then forgot all about it :,)
> 
> ALSO, I've probably already mentioned it, one way or another, but the reason why this story is now almost idyllic is mainly for contrast, because, at some point, it will be dark, dark, dark, oh-so-dramatic and dark.

Tadeusz Makowski, _Maskarada_

*

If I could have done it all again, I would have loved you better. But I could not have loved you more.

~Sue Zhao, _I loved you in all the ways that I could_

*

It’s not surprising when Jerusalem asks about it. It’s only surprising that she kept quiet for a whole month.

“Not telling,” Quickly says, adjusting the newsboy cap on his head. “It has sentimental value.”

Quickly wears the cap whenever he can. Some teachers ask him to take it off in class, and he always obliges, but doesn’t take it off otherwise. He dusts it off at the end of the day and ask Aubrey to put it on top of the wardrobe for him, too short to do so himself, and in the morning, he asks Aubrey to get it down for him. His hair, whenever Aubrey gets to see it, is perpetually flattened by it, only the ends curling up freely like a very unfortunate haircut.

“What if I stole it?” Jerusalem says, casual, and Quickly gives her a look. “What if I stole it and _burned_ it?”

Quickly shudders, and Regina puts a calming hand on his shoulder.

“I’d make him a new one,” she says, giving Jerusalem a warning look, and Quickly smiles, but Aubrey can tell from his expression that that wouldn’t do at all.

They’re all almost done with dinner by the time Treasure Little gets to them with a wooden crate full of apples in risk of overbalancing. Aubrey reaches out to hold it up right in time, and only one fruit falls off it, straight into Easy’s lap.

“Sorry, sorry!” Treasure says, and Aubrey helps her lower the crate so that it’s half-propped on the table. It’s a post-dinner initiative December Graham insisted on and launched right away, a fruit a day for each boarder, distributed halfway through the meal. It’s supposed to be a new person every day, but Aubrey can’t fathom why they’d allow Treasure Little – often sneered at in the corridors, _there goes our little treasure_ , and so on – distribute the apples even just the once. She’s the only first-year smaller than Quickly and has arms that remind Aubrey of parsley roots – thin, white, and limp. “You okay there?” she asks Easy politely. Easy nods, teeth already grazing the apple skin, as if to test it.

“He’s not Snow White, you know,” Jerusalem says, dry. “An apple won’t kill him.”

Treasure is the same red-haired girl who held up the phone queue their first day at school, talking to someone animatedly about mascaron ornaments, and Jerusalem hasn’t forgotten it. She still refers to Treasure as Pigtails, even though Treasure doesn’t tie her hair most of the time, and when a choir of voices starts chanting about little treasures in the corridors, Jerusalem never joins in, but she always smiles.

Aubrey, in turn, likes Treasure quite a bit. He bumped into her in the kitchens a few weeks ago, sneaking in for tea, and they had an illuminating conversation about frescoes. They started off by stuttering shyly about the weather, including details such as air pressure, and ended up agreeing that between Michelangelo’s _The Creation of Adam_ and _The Creation of the Sun and the Moon_ , the former was the more superior by far, but what they really liked was _The Toreador Fresco_ , Michelangelo who?

“Anyway, here,” Treasure says now, placing apples next to their plates. Jerusalem frowns at her and pokes hers with a fork.

“Mine’s all bruised” she complains, and it’s Quickly, of all people, who laughs.

“They’re _all_ bruised,” he points out. “They’re from a local orchard, aren’t they? They’re good quality, too. You’d be bruised yourself, if you fell off a tree, you know.”

It’s such a not-Quickly thing to say that they all stare at him in silence, dumbfounded. He smiles and cuts off the bruised bit of Jerusalem’s apple with a butter knife and puts it in his mouth, returning the fruit. Jerusalem is staring at him with such shock that for a moment she forgets to take the apple back, Quickly’s arm stretched awkwardly between them.

“Aren’t you going to worry about germs and worms and bird pee?” Kipp asks, careful. “And what happened to washing everything three times before putting it in your mouth?”

“Well, of course I’m going to do that with candy from _you_ , God knows where it’s been,” Quickly scoffs. “Apples are fine.”

He smiles blissfully around a bite.

On Aubrey’s left, Easy is unusually quiet, nibbling on his own fruit and seemingly lost in thought, eating the browned bits, too.

“Say, Pig— _Treasure_ ,” Jerusalem says, smiling widely, which never bodes well for anyone. “What do you think of Quickly’s choice of headwear? A bit ridiculous, isn’t it?”

Quickly scowls at her, but Treasure only smiles.

“I like it,” she says, childishly earnest. “It’s like that film, what’s the name? _Once Upon A Time in America_.”

Quickly blushes right up to the roots of his hair, or, well, at least to the brim of his cap.

“Nice people,” Jerusalem sighs, shaking her head, like the whole concept is offending and beneath her. “Anyway, what are you still doing here? You’ve got all those other apples to deliver, no?”

Treasure’s face falls, and Regina’s already opening her mouth to scold Jerusalem when Easy does so himself.

“Oh, just shut _up_ , do you _have_ to be so rude?” he snaps, angry, and then stares at Treasure, at the apple in his hand, back at Treasure, something helpless about it, like he doesn’t quite know why he defended her so vehemently.

“My, my,” Jerusalem says, delighted. “How out of character, everyone! It’s one strange day, isn’t it?”

Easy kicks her under the table, and Treasure smiles sadly and leaves, the crate tilting once to this side, once to that, but mostly staying upright.

“Why would you do that?” Quickly says, quiet. He sounds deeply disturbed. “I can’t believe you’d do that.”

He leaves, dinner unfinished, newsboy cap askew. He takes the apple with him.

“Oh,” Jerusalem says, a little regretful. “Do you think he’s in love with her or something?”

Regina closes the book she had open next to her plate – Sappho’s poems – and calmly gets up herself, following after Quickly at a seemingly leisurely pace.

Jerusalem slumps in her seat.

“Are you all going to leave, too?” she says, petulant. “I’m sorry, I suppose.”

Easy gives her a disapproving look and never stops frowning in anger, but he cuts off a big bite of his chicken and places it on Jerusalem’s plate like a peace offering. Jerusalem gives him a wet smile, and no one dares comment on it, only the scraping of cutlery for sounds.

*

Later, on his way to his dormitory, Aubrey catches sight of a browning apple core set proudly on the windowsill on Easy’s side of his own room through the open door, and it occurs to him that for Easy, there must be little to no difference between an apple and knit mittens and a Monet.

*

After, Aubrey will think of those apples, and how maybe everything would have turned out different, hadn’t Jerusalem felt guilty.

How maybe they wouldn’t have grown that close and—

*

Lavinia Pye has an upturned nose, chin so pointy that you could peel carrots with it, and a voice far too loud for a body as small as hers. She pins her honey-blond hair at her temples, and Aubrey suspects that if she stopped frowning, the wrinkle between her eyebrows would prove to be permanent, but he can’t know for sure, since she never does stop frowning. When out of the school uniform, her trousers are always too short, revealing her ankles, but unlike with Easy, it’s on purpose, and her shirtsleeves are always too long, covering her knuckles, but, also unlike with Easy, that, too, is on purpose. She wears a red ribbon with her uniform rather than a tie, and no teacher dares scold her for it, even though they would scold the other girls if they tried to do the same. She often talks about how much money her father makes, and how much money he effectively spends, and how they will all go to Mallorca in the summer, all her family and the dog, too. She’s a good student, but doesn’t filter information too well – when asked about something in class, rather than directly answer the question, she will list off everything she knows on the subject.

Their first week at Wilgefortis, Jerusalem snuck into Lavinia’s dormitory and crushed a previously caught spider dead between the pages of Lavinia’s diary, on the intro where Lavinia described Jerusalem as ‘a freak who probably hides a third arm somewhere; in fact, that’s what her breasts must be.’ The girls sleep on the other side of the school, three corridors away, but Aubrey could hear the screams when Lavinia discovered the spider loud and clear. It had been one of the big ones, with thick legs and torso, furry like it would have survived the winter semester if it hadn’t been for Jerusalem, spider-catcher extraordinaire.

“It looks idiotic, is all,” Lavinia says now, hands on hips, nose so high up in the air that Aubrey’s quite sure he would be able to see straight to her brain if he tried. He’s not trying. “I’m sure it’s to hide lice. Disgusting.”

Jerusalem, in spite of considering Quickly’s newsboy cap ridiculous herself, flicks a pencil at Lavinia with a bored expression. Lavinia rubs at her nose where the pencil bounced off and sighs, like she’s too grown-up for the lot of them. Easy pokes his tongue all the way out, proving her point, and Kipp shoves it back inside his mouth with a pained expression.

“Quickly wouldn’t stand having lice,” Regina says, reasonably. “I’m sure he’d rather shave all his hair off.”

Lavinia tilts her chin even higher up, so that Aubrey suspects looking down on them as she is must be quite difficult, and turns to regard Regina with scorn. They’re all sat around a small library table, and Lavinia stumbled upon them with a stack of books in her arms, initially caught-off-guard, and then, ever the opportunist, spiteful. Aubrey stares at the copy of _Master and Margarita_ she’s cradling, and wonders how come such great literature can be read by someone this nasty.

Once, Lavinia poured a bottle of detergent into a flower pot before class to see what would happen.

“Nobody asked _you_ ,” she says, glowering at Reggie. Regina doesn’t bother to so much as spare her a glance, too absorbed by Sappho’s poems. She’s reading the collection again, from the start, frowning at some of the lines like she’s searching for something specific.

“Well, nobody asked you about anything, either, and here you are, providing your opinion, anyway,” she says calmly. She finishes reading the poem she’s stuck on, and only then closes the book and puts it away, looking up at Lavinia with a sigh. It should remind Aubrey of his father, but doesn’t. Where his father does things like that as some strange power play, to make others feel insignificant, Regina seems to think confrontations unimportant and irritating enough to put them off, even for a minute. “I think you’ll find that Bulgakov there is far more interesting than Quickly’s headwear.”

Lavinia stares at the copy of _Master and Margarita_ , and huffs, irritated.

“Well, certainly far more interesting than… _Sappho_? Oh, Jesus. You a _lesbian_ , or something?”

Everything goes quiet, which is strange, because Aubrey could swear it was already quiet before.

Regina folds her hands together, too slow for it to be a nervous gesture. She tilts her head to the side, too, and watches Lavinia so intently that Lavinia scowls and looks away.

“No,” Regina says calmly. “I’m not. But worry not, even if I was, I wouldn’t kiss you, or molest you, or whatever it is you’re imagining. You smell like marzipan.”

Lavinia makes an offended sound.

“I _hate_ marzipan,” Regina adds, unnecessarily.

“I could make your life a living hell, you know,” Lavinia says, voice trembling, and it should sound stupid, a scrawny thing in ribbons, cheeks flushed like someone’s just slapped her, but Aubrey remembers that her father invests in the school, and has a yacht, and is in the papers.

“Life’s already enough of a living hell as it is,” Easy growls, banging his head on the table with a loud thud. Aubrey feels a sudden urge to sprawl himself all over the table to keep him from doing it again. “We’re trying to study here, you know.”

“Actually, you were checking how far up your nose you could shove a pencil before you’d start bleeding,” Kipp points out, unhelpful.

“You’re like that girl from _Charlie and the Chocolate Factory_ , you know,” Jerusalem tells Lavinia, cheek puffed out with boredom. “Whatshername, Veronica? Victoria?”

“Veruca Salt,” Regina says. “She gets thrown down a garbage chute by squirrels, doesn’t she?”

Lavinia tilts her chin up, up, up.

“Chocolate makes you _fat_ ,” she proclaims in a snotty voice, and Jerusalem bursts out laughing, delighted.

“So does ego, you know,” Kipp says. “If it’s as big as yours, it needs somewhere to grow, like an extra organ, until you’re all bloated and lumpy and ugly, how’s that?”

Lavinia opens her mouth to retaliate when Regina gently catches the hem of her sleeve, leaning in close to examine her hand.

“You should wear mittens when you go out, you know,” she muses, eyes wide. “Your knuckles are chapped, and it’s only October, after all.”

Lavinia’s eyes grow big, and she jumps away, cradling her hand as if burnt, almost dropping the books.

“Oh, come on, now, she hasn’t even touched you,” Jerusalem snaps, angry.

Lavinia swallows, throat working like she’s gulping something down, and stares at her hand as if Regina has.

“You’re all a bunch of _freaks_ ,” she says, voice shaking. “I don’t understand how you can associate with them, Aubrey.”

Their second week at Wilgefortis, Aubrey caught Lavinia in the library, trying to climb a bookshelf to reach for a paperback she wanted. He offered to get it for her, and it took her five minutes to stammer out the title of _The Princess Bride._ She’s been awful to the others but kind to him ever since, and he suspects it’s because, back then, he never laughed.

“That’s not yours to understand,” Kipp says, slinging an arm across Aubrey’s shoulders. “AA loves us, don’t you?”

He kisses Aubrey’s cheek with a loud smack.

That day, her clutching _The Princess Bride_ , cross-legged on the ground between the shelves, Lavinia told him that Dora Maar was okay in the painting in the library, but that she hated her as _The Weeping Woman._ ‘It always reminds me of how slugs writhe when you sprinkle them with salt,” she confessed, a silent admission that she must have done it, once.

Now, Lavinia adjusts her stack of books and scowls again.

“People like you end up dead in a ditch somewhere, you know,” she announces proudly, and then leaves, shoes clicking.

“Why does everyone hate my hat, anyway?” Quickly mumbles, adjusting his newsboy cap. Jerusalem stares after Lavinia angrily, tearing her essay to shreds, and Aubrey can feel something starting, like clouds drawing together or too many people whispering in clusters in the corridors.

“She hates everything, Francis, dear,” Kipp says in his mock-posh voice, and Aubrey wonders if it’s having lived with his father that makes him wait for the other shoe to drop with dread. 

*

A week later, drop it does.

*

They all stand over it in silence for a moment, Aubrey, Regina, and Easy.

Quickly’s cap was kidnapped two hours before, ripped off his head by Jonathan Small – a year older than them, popular, and not small at all – and they’ve been looking for it ever since.

Aubrey can hear Easy hiss next to him at the newsboy cap floating in one of the third-floor toilets, and he tries to force himself to fish it out, but it feels like he can’t move. Not paralysis, not exactly, just the air around him too thick to wade through all of sudden, like cold butter.

Easy lets out an angry scream just then, and bursts out of the stall like he can’t stand the confinement.

“Fuck, fuck, _fuck_ ,” he screams. He kicks a wall, too, then yelps and cradles his foot. “Fuck them all, _fuck_!”

It sounds ridiculous, screamed by someone whose voice hasn’t broken yet, and Easy’s wearing long trousers, but, somehow, Aubrey thinks of those scars on his knees, smile, no smile. He watches Easy slide down to the floor and roll up into a small embryo, like he’s trying to hide himself from the world. That one lock of hair springing forward, and how if he was really hiding, it would surely get him caught—

“Crying, spilt milk, no use,” Regina says neutrally. She rolls up her sleeves, fishes the cap out, and wrings it over the toilet like laundry. She insisted on assisting them in the boys’ bathroom search, unfazed, and she looks stubborn now, eyes wetter than usual, but eyebrows drawn low, like she wants to cry but won’t. “I’ll wash it and it’ll be as good as new. I’ll wash it three times. _Four_. Let’s not tell Quickly, shall we?”

Outside the stall, Easy unfolds himself and hits the floor with a loosely curled fist, once, twice. He’s shaking like he’s about to throw up, and Aubrey almost says – stupid, stupid – don’t bite your tongue. Don’t bite your tongue, are you cold?

Easy rolls onto his back and stares numbly up at the ceiling.

“We can’t not tell him,” he says, surprisingly grown-up. “He’ll throw a fit if he learns from someone else, and they’ll taunt him with it, you know they will.”

Regina seems to be considering it for a moment. Eventually, she nods and moves to clean her hands in one of the washbasins. She scrubs for a minute, dries them with a paper towel, and crouches over Easy only then, sinking her hand in his hair.

“It’s too exhausting,” he whines. “Having—”

He never does say ‘friends’, and later Aubrey will wonder if he’d meant to finish by ‘things’ instead.

Easy keeps banging his fist on the floor even now, lazy and rhythmical, as if he’s forgotten that he’s doing it, and Aubrey stifles the urge to crouch beside him and pin his wrist immobile to the ground.

“It’s too much trouble,” Easy grumbles, and when Regina asks him what is, carding her fingers through his hair – and he lets her, just lets her – he says, “ _Everything_.”

“Stop throwing a tantrum,” Regina scolds him, not unkindly.

“I’m _calm_ ,” he insists.

“You’re sprawled all over the bathroom floor, stubbornly bruising your hand.”

“ _Calm_.”

She scratches his scalp, and he arches like a cat.

Aubrey sighs, stuffs tissues down the drain, and fills the washbasin with hot water, ready to wash the cap over and over again, until it’s clean, until it’s all fine.

*

They tell Quickly after dinner, the cap still moist when they return it to him, smelling of soap and detergent too strongly to smell of anything else. Quickly stares at it with glassy eyes – not wet, just strangely…

Dolls have eyes like that, Aubrey thinks.

Quickly stares at the newsboy cap for a long while, won’t touch it. Regina holds it out like an offering, and he just _won’t touch it._ Her hands are steady, his own shake.

When he does take it at last, he slowly brings it to his nose and covers half his face with it, eyes closed. He inhales, and his hands near-spasm, bunching the fabric as he inhales again, and again, too sudden, too deep, not deep enough, hyperventilates.

Kipp says, “Quickly.”

Jerusalem says, “Francis.”

When Quickly inhales again, it’s a gasp, like he was underwater for too long, like he’s on dry land at last, or is he?

“Hey,” Kipp says then, placing his hand between Quickly’s shoulderblades.

“My—” Quickly starts, stutters. Next to Aubrey, Easy chews on his sleeve, tugs on it with his teeth like he can’t stand it all. “My grandfather—”

“Easy, there,” Kipp says, pressing his hand more firmly against Quickly’s back.

“He drowned, and this caught on a branch, and it smelled like him, but it doesn’t now, it doesn’t now, _it doesn’t now_ —”

Quickly's never mentioned his family before.

Aubrey tries to remember everything he’s ever read about helping people breathe, and _can’t._

“Alright, Francis,” Jerusalem says, strangely calm. “It doesn’t smell like him, so what? It’s still his, isn’t it?”

Quickly gasps so loud that Aubrey winces, thinks it must _hurt._

“ _Was_ ,” he corrects, and Jerusalem all but rips the hat out of his hands.

“Was, sure, whatever you say,” she says, not angry, not quite. Commanding. She smiles meanly, and puts the cap on Quickly’s head, covering up those yellow tufts of hair, and thank God, because Aubrey wouldn’t stand the sight of them even a moment longer. “It doesn’t matter, alright? Now, I don’t know about you kids, but I feel like breaking a few rules this fine afternoon.”

*

“Now what?”

They stare up at the stone wall, shielding their eyes from the sun. It’s hot for October, the day holding the last of summer by the tail, and around them, the leaves are still partly green. It looks like they’ve been set on fire, and Aubrey stares, wondering what Monet would make of it.

He thinks he’d make the cluster of trees more beautiful than it is, and feels guilty about it.

“Now we climb over,” Jerusalem says, a determined set to her mouth. Aubrey imagines that she’s been defying someone her whole life, putting her foot down, climbing out the window, living.

“You know,” Aubrey dares say, “the wall is here for a reason.”

Quickly stares up at it almost indifferent, and Regina squeezes his hand. He’s been clutching it ever since she held it out to him when they all left the school, an obnoxiously red blanket around Easy’s shoulders like a cape so it would appear they were going to picnic somewhere on the school grounds to whoever might have been looking out one of the windows just then. Aubrey decides that there’s something selfless about the way Regina touches people, as if she doesn’t ever need the contact herself, but knows instinctively when others do, and provides it wordlessly each time. 

“We just need to climb that tree over there,” Jerusalem says, as if she hasn’t heard Aubrey at all. “And then climb down, somehow. Jump, even. It’s what, seven, eight feet? It’s fine, really.”

It’s ten feet, easily.

There are cigarette stubs all over the bedding, and Aubrey can’t help but wonder if some third-years will catch them red-handed any minute now, stumbling here for a smoke.

“It’s true that anyone could climb over,” Aubrey admits. “Which only highlights the fact that there must be a good reason why no one ever does.”

“I bet people do,” Jerusalem says, stubborn, and tests the nearest tree trunk, wedging her shoe between two knots. “They just never get caught.”

She grins at him over his shoulder, and it’s pretty grim as smiles go, the way he imagines Caesar must have smiled when winning The Battle of Alesia. She’s a collection of set lines, but her hands are shaking, not like she’s scared, but like she’s trying not to rip the world to shreds. She starts climbing, higher and higher, and later, Aubrey will wonder if any of them would have followed, hadn’t it been for Quickly.

“Don’t sprain anything, eh?” Kipp yells after her, and Quickly lets go of Regina’s hand and starts climbing, too. “Oh, we _are_ doing it, then?”

Kipp himself is next, climbing up the tree like he was born to do it, his long limbs not so awkward anymore.

“ _I have night's cloak to hide me from their eyes, /And, but thou love me, let them find me here_ ,” he recites, pompous and dramatic. “ _My life were better ended by their hate/Than death prorogued, wanting of thy love_.”

Aubrey doesn’t tell him that there wasn’t actually any balcony or climbing in the original _Romeo and Juliet_ , because he figures it’s not the best time.

Regina is next, a heavy sigh, a “well, then.”

Aubrey stares at her climbing, turns, stares at Easy next to him.

“It’s different for me,” Easy says. “If I fall and break something, my parents won’t come and get me. If I kill myself, no one will miss me.”

Aubrey watches him and thinks that Easy is years too old to be friends with mice and years too young to be talking like that. Aubrey doesn’t know what to do with him, which is just as well, because Easy’s not his to do anything with.

He almost tells him that _he_ would miss him, but he thinks Easy wouldn’t stand it, would – hit him, maybe, the way children hit.

He thinks he wouldn’t stand it himself.

“That painting of yours,” Easy says, and Aubrey doesn’t say, _not_ mine. “She looks like she fell off a tree and broke and broke and broke.”

Aubrey remembers something suddenly, Kipp sitting on a windowsill, the second-floor window ajar, and Easy’s eyes wide, fingers tight on the hem of Kipp’s shirt, Kipp oblivious to it.

He doesn’t ask if Easy’s scared of heights because he already knows.

“You won’t break anything,” he tells Easy, testing the lowest branch of the tree.

“Oh? How so?”

“I won’t let you.”

Easy raises his eyebrows, surprised, just like Aubrey is himself, at the authoritative tone. Aubrey stares up at the sky, a brilliant blue, the cruellest colour to shoot ducks against, the cruellest colour to fall under.

“It’s not the climbing up that’s” _scary_ “awful, is it? It’s the climbing down.”

Easy frowns at him, stares up at the wall.

“ _Look at me_ ,” Aubrey says, and he uses his best-student voice, his to-be-lawyer voice, his his-father’s-son voice.

Aubrey didn’t even know he had it, this voice, but Easy does look at him, so he must.

“If you climb without thinking about having to climb back down, you’ve already won,” he tells Easy. What he doesn’t say is, if you climb up, you’ve already won, because then you’ll have to come down either way.

Easy doesn’t stare at the tree, doesn’t stare at the wall, doesn’t stare at the sky.

“Trust me?” Aubrey says, allowing himself a smile.

“I don’t,” Easy says, matter-of-fact.

“You will.”

“You guys coming, or what?” Jerusalem calls from the other side of the wall. Aubrey hasn’t even heard them drop.

Easy takes a breath, squares his scrawny shoulders, pushes his lower lip out, _steels_ himself. He keeps staring at Aubrey, and Aubrey has to tilt his head at the wall for him to look away. Easy looks up at the tree like he’ll eat his way to the top of it if he has to, beaver-style. When he starts climbing, testing the knots in the bark, hoisting himself up, Aubrey keeps his arms loose at his sides, against himself, because if Easy glances down and sees Aubrey ready to catch him, he’ll think there must be a reason for that readiness, and God knows what will happen then.

So Aubrey stands like he wouldn’t catch Easy if Easy fell, so that Easy can believe that Aubrey knows he won’t have to and, above, there are no birds in the sky.

Aubrey starts climbing after him only once Easy is safely on top of the wall, and tries to think and think and think, knows that if Easy falls, he’ll hate all of them forever, knows it, somehow, in his very bones.

“There’s no way out, now,” Easy says, wide-eyed, when Aubrey steps off the base of a thick branch and onto the wall. “You _knew_ it would be like this.”

“You knew, too, didn’t you?” Aubrey says gently, dusts off his trousers, tries to look nonchalant.

He’s never pulled off nonchalance in his life, not once, not really, but has come near enough quite a few times.

Below them, Jerusalem is waving a hand in their direction, impatient, and Regina is picking leaves out of Kipp’s hair. Quickly is— Quickly is. 

“I’m not going to jump,” Easy says, shaking his head.

“No,” Aubrey agrees. “You’re not.”

“Well, then—”

“Give me your jacket, please.”

This new voice, and Easy opens his mouth to argue, but thinks better of it, takes the jacket off, hands it over. Aubrey takes his own off, makes a knot.

Something his mother taught him because everything had to be an event, a project, a theme. Today, she said, we’ll learn how to tie a shoelace, and a few other things besides.

Sailor’s knots, how to tie them, how to undo them, blisters on her hands by the end of the day, and it was nothing like hunting, Aubrey soaked it all up.

He knots their jackets together by the sleeves, and then ties the other sleeve of his own to the tree’s protruding branch, tests it.

“You’re all bones,” he says, trying to sound confident. “It’ll hold.”

Once Easy grabs the other end of the makeshift rope, the drop will be six feet rather than ten, and Aubrey thinks it might make all the difference.

“What if it doesn’t?”

“You only need it to hold for a second, or two,” Aubrey tells him, jerks on the jackets.

“Branches break,” Easy points out. “Fast.”

“Nothing breaks _that_ fast.”

Years later, he'll remember saying it, and he'll laugh, and laugh, and _laugh_.

“I don’t trust you yet,” Easy tells him, jacket sleeve in hand, stitches just there, good stitches, good fabric, good school.

“I know.”

“ _Make_ me trust you.”

He sounds half-cross, half-pleading.

“Promise me something,” he goes on, desperate. “Something that will make this okay.”

 _Dearest Pepper_ , Aubrey remembers, _I think that places are lonely with out trees._

“Something that will convince me that I couldn’t possibly fall.”

Aubrey remembers Dora Maar’s broken, broken face.

“Here’s an impossibility for you, then,” he says, staring at Easy’s knuckles until Easy tightens his grip on the jacket sleeve. He looks back up at him and stares into those bourbon-eyes of his. “If you fall, you can tear _Dora Maar au Chat_ to shreds.”

The sky, still birdless, makes Aubrey think that blue is a bad colour.

“I—” Easy starts, wide-eyed. “You don’t—”

Dora Maar is not Aubrey’s to bet on, and he wouldn’t, if she was, an impossibility alright, and yet he doesn’t fool himself. He knows that if Easy breaks something now, he _will_ tear the Picasso to shreds, even if it’ll ruin his life, and Aubrey smiles wryly, because he cares more about the painting than he does about Easy’s bones, and Easy must know.

“ _Fine_ ,” Easy says angirly and tests the jackets one last time. He lowers himself, props his feet on the wall, and the fabric stretches, stretches, doesn’t give.

Easy drops to the ground, whole, and Aubrey chokes, breathes, breathes, _breathes_ , thinks, _thank God._

“You sure took your sweet time,” Jerusalem complains when Aubrey drops to the ground himself a moment later, and Aubrey breathes, breathes, breathes, doesn’t pass out. Easy watches him, wary and curious, like he’s never seen him before. Aubrey knows that if he asked Easy if he trusts him now, he’d say yes, but Aubrey’s throat is too dry to speak.

“Direction town?” Kipp says, hand on Quickly’s shoulder. Jerusalem smiles, and, back at Wilgefortis, Dora Maar must be smiling, too, and so all is well.

*

It’s Kipp who leads them to the nearest town along a country road, half an hour of walking and they’re there.

“We stopped by on our way to school, me and my mother,” he explains. “For coffee.”

Bullford is small and caught between shabby and lovely, something you might want to take a picture of if you squint, tilt your head right, are an optimist. A lot of brick, a lot of stone, ivy all over -- it has its charm even if it seems half-deserted. A typical English village, one might say, pubs and small shops and cobblestones.

“What do you want to do, then?” Kipp asks Jerusalem. “Ice cream?”

Jerusalem shakes her head.

“Clothes.”

Kipp groans.

“Not like _that_.”

“Like _how_ , then?”

She makes them visit three shops, all to close in half an hour, before she makes an ‘aha’ sound with a wide grin on her face. 

“‘Aha’ _what_?” Kipp demands, pretending to glance at a watch he doesn’t have. It reminds Aubrey of December Graham, and he thinks, what if we’re caught, but there’s no heart in it. Easy is fine, Dora is fine, and Aubrey feels deflated, like a tire with all the air gone out of it.

“We’re making a fashion statement, Kippy,” Jerusalem explains and takes a newsboy cap off a rack.

Kipp frowns, understands, grins.

Regina raises her eyebrows, smiles.

Quickly opens his mouth, doesn’t say anything.

Easy frowns, doesn’t stop frowning.

The shop assistant regards them curiously when they start trying on the hats, but, apart from the meek ‘hello’ he graced them with when they filed in, he doesn’t say a word.

“Hey, try this one—”

“You look so daft, AA, here—”

“Oh my _God_ —”

“Here, here, like this—”

“ _Oh_ , I like this one—”

“You look _so cute_ , Reggie—”

“What do I do with my _hair_?”

“Wait, here—”

Easy doesn’t try on any and, at some point, Jerusalem frowns at him, accusing.

Easy stares at his shoes, mumbles something.

“Come again?”

“I DON’T HAVE ANY MONEY, YOU STUPID CARP-LICKER,” Easy explodes, causing the shop assistant to jump in fright behind the cash register. “I don’t have any money, alright?!”

They all stare at him, Kipp giggling into his sleeve, whispering ‘carp-licker’ over and over again like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard.

“Well, of course you don’t,” Jerusalem says, unimpressed. “That’s why it’s my treat, you twat. Now pick something, alright?”

Easy stares at her, something vulnerable about his not-quite-open mouth, until Jerusalem sighs and takes pity on him. She shoves a grey newsboy cap on his head and tilts her head, appraising. Adjusts it, smiles.

“ _Perfect._ ”

“Hey,” Quickly says. “You don’t have to do this, everyone—”

Regina gently taps his mouth closed with two fingers, another one of those instinctive touches.

“One for all, all for one,” Jerusalem proclaims proudly. “Or whatever it is Shakespeare said.”

“ _Unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno_ , originally,” Aubrey says automatically. “Or the French _un pour tous, tous pour un_. And it was Dumas, not Shakespeare.”

“ _Actually_ ,” Kipp says, grinning at him, black newsboy cap askew, “Shakespeare did say that, in _The Rape of Lucrece_.”

Aubrey thinks it’s a good thing that he ended up not pointing out that there was no balcony in _Romeo and Juliet_ before, because it occurs to him that Kipp might know.

He smiles.

They pay and leave, the bell above the door ringing and ringing, the soon-to-set sun outside like a bullet hole shot through the sky and straight to heaven. Jerusalem grins at all of them, dark curls coloured gold in the light, and her smile loses the sharp edge, all wrongs righted, no bullies, never again, what bullies?

Easy, when Aubrey glances over at him, is fondling his new cap but, unlike Jerusalem, he doesn’t seem done, not sated. Quickly manages a weak smile, and Easy frowns like it’s not enough.

When they go back, Easy climbs over the wall, no complaints, and still—

Still, Aubrey knows that something will happen, that it’s not the end, newsboy caps or not.

*

Easy only relaxes two days later, pacified and calmly chewing toast at the breakfast table. He looks almost serene, and Aubrey is scared to ask, but asks anyway.

“What have you done, now?”

Easy smiles, the very picture of innocence, and finishes chewing, swallows.

“Do you think Jonathan Small ever opens his textbooks?” he says, sweetly. “I figure not, unless there’s a test coming up, and since he has one in two weeks, he’s in for a surprise. Nothing too bad, don’t look so _scandalized_. Just a few slices of ham between the pages, about to go bad. And a dead frog, too, since you’d never let me keep it, and I had to do _something_ with it.”

Aubrey stares.

“Are you sure it’s— adequate?”

Easy frowns, puts the toast away, faces him. Doesn’t say anything, only looks, bourbon eyes, and Aubrey knows what alcohol does to people, refuses to get drunk like this, staring into all that hate.

He remembers it, standing over that toilet, wanting to do something, and not knowing how.

Hard to blame Easy for knowing.

“What Jerusalem did to Lavinia Pye’s diary,” Easy says, and shrugs. “I felt inspired.”

He’s not expelled, he’s not broken, he’s not dead on the ground, he has a grey newsboy cap on his head, and, for better or for worse, he’s theirs.

Aubrey takes them all in, Quickly still down but better, Jerusalem laughing with tears in her eyes, Regina knitting something with an indulgent smile, Kipp pretending to be dead, and can’t help but think that they will all pay for believing the sweet lie of friendship is forever.

Still, just then, he believes it, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Both Treasure and Lavinia (I did warn about the ridiculous names, but I'm sorry, anyhow) will be important but apart from them two this won't have too many new characters introduced in the school section, at least not many crucial ones. 
> 
> I named the town Bullford to make fun of Oxford, because one should never miss the opportunity of making fun of Oxford. 
> 
> (I'm salty because, apparently, it's not enough to be extra-smart to study there, you gotta be extra-rich too, since it's an expensive place to live and the uni doesn't let you work while you're a student there). 
> 
> As always, thank you for reading <333


	7. adjournment -- interlude, autumn 2005

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a job interview one Octover evening

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The dates are very, very important. Okay, maybe not VERY, but important. This is a taste of what this story will look like at some point, though the chapter is a bit silly, and I'm not actually planning to be quite this pretentious later on, promise
> 
> (writing this gave me Craig's Bond flashbacks, since he's always so serious it makes me laugh)

Quentin Metsys the Younger, _Sieve Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I_

_*_

Little Alice fell  


d

o

w

n

the hOle, 

bumped her head

and bruised her soul

~Lewis Carroll

*

The man called January pours Sparrow a glass of wine, smiles, and tells Sparrow that he can give him whatever he wants.

“As long as it’s a painting, of course, but isn’t it always art, with people like us?”

Sparrow tilts his head back and laughs, then pretends to down the wine. He lets it trickle into the sleeve of his coat, thick enough for the stains not to show.

He always tries to avoid taking the coat off unless strictly necessary. It’s hardly ever strictly necessary.

“Whatever I want?” he drawls, smiling over the lip of the glass, only a drop of the liquid left at the bottom. Good wine, old, red. “My, my.”

He remembers wanting goodness itself, and wanting things -- _people_ \-- he could never have.

He remembers wanting _everything_.

It _is_ always art, with people like them.

“If you help me, I’ll steal anything for you,” the man called January vows, and folds his hand over his heart, tilts his head.

Shame people like him sell their hearts to be rid of the obstruction, dispose of the dead weight not unlike how sailors will toss luggage overboard when a ship starts sinking.

“I don’t want you to steal a painting for me,” Sparrow tells him, leaning closer over the coffee table, his shirtsleeve soaked inside his coat and stuck to his skin. “I want you to find one.”

*

Later, they play chess. The man called January cheats once, and Sparrow pretends not to notice.The man called January pretends not to notice Sparrow pretending not to notice, and Sparrow pretends not to notice the man called January pretending not to notice Sparrow pretending not to notice the man called January’s cheating. The man called January pretends—

Well, it’s a bit of a _mise en abyme_. Each of them thinks himself smarter than the other, both self-taught, and Sparrow knows that the man called January is fully aware of Sparrow thinking himself more clever, just like Sparrow’s aware of the man called January thinking _himself_ more clever, and aware of the man called January’s awareness of—

Which is to say, it could go on forever.

Sparrow knows that agreeing to the man called January’s offer means letting himself get framed as the man called January sees fit and hung wherever the man called January will be able to see him best, but he also knows that one can’t account for whatever it is paintings get up to once one leaves the room.

The man called January might be a smart, smart man, but he’s also a busy man.

“Do you know why I’ve never stolen _Mona Lisa_?” he asks Sparrow now, eyeing Sparrow’s king like it's a bone with gristle stuck to it, waiting to be licked clean.

“Enlighten me,” Sparrow says, pretending to sound bored, like he already knows the answer. The man called January does him the courtesy of pretending not to notice the pretending, Sparrow will give him that.

“I just couldn’t be bothered,” he says simply, spreading his hands. “Frankly, _Mona Lisa_ bores me.”

Sparrow refuses to like him on principle, but he does smile.

“You’re no god,” he points out, knocking one of the man called January’s pieces off the board. It’s just a pawn, but it’s _something_.

“No,” the man called January agrees, “but I’m the next best thing.”

*

Once, a girl talked to him about Michelangelo, clay drying on the webbing between her fingers, repeated that famous thing he’d said.

_I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free._

Back then, Sparrow wondered what would happen if someone saw a person trapped in marble and carved them out of it just so they could ruin them. Years later, he caught his reflection in the mirror and understood.

*

There’s a fireplace behind the man called January, wood ablaze, and it makes the study seem almost cosy, even though it’s anything but.

The man called January has _Judith Beheading Holofernes_ over the mantelpiece, and he claims that it’s the original, and that the poor staff at The Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica are guarding a near-perfect copy, none the wiser.

Sparrow hasn’t decided if he believes him yet.

“She took him by the hair,” the man called January tells him, smiling fondly at the painting. Sparrow considers moving a chess piece while he’s not looking, but is already tired of all the pretending that would then ensue. “It’s always the hair,” the man called January adds. His own is cut short, but left long enough to fist, were one to try.

Sparrow can’t imagine anyone ever trying.

“It was _Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening_ that really got me into art,” the man called January tells him freely, and Sparrow recognizes it for the investment it is, a sort of an amiable 'meet me halfway, see how trustworthy I am?'. Trust is the last sentiment it inspires in Sparrow. “It was like being on drugs, only for free. Well, there was the museum entrance fee, of course, but it is for free, now that I’ve stolen it.”

“You haven’t _really_ stolen it, have you?”

He goes for amused and indulgent, in terms of tone of voice, and pulls it off, just barely.

The man called January smiles.

“Not _yet_ ,” he admits, leaning back in his armchair. “But doesn’t the wait make consummation all the sweeter?”

Sparrow doesn’t manage to hide his reaction to that particular choice of wording fast enough, scowling in repulsion, and the man called January laughs, delighted, the long column of his throat like something no one would dare put their hands around.

“When you go around with colour on your lips, there’s no use pretending you don’t kiss paintings,” the man called January says, and it would sound ridiculous coming from just about anyone else, but it’s _not_ anyone else.

Once, Sparrow had to rub charcoal off his lips, but it wasn't from kissing. Once, he had to spit charcoal out. 

For a while, they just watch each other. They both have a strategic way of moving, and of _not_ moving, the man called January rod-straight in his chair, not stiff, not exactly. _Vigilant._ Vigilant and self-contained, as if his blood would stop in his veins if he wished it so, or would never stop at all. He’s a lecture in flesh, a study in how men become myths. He might be all sharp lines, but he reminds Sparrow of a circle, anyway, a perfect shape.

Sparrow is different, holding himself like he doesn’t have joints, holding himself like he has too many bones, no bones, some bones.

A rat pretending to be a snake pretending to be a cat, pretending to think himself a bird.

“So what will it be, then?”

Neither of them wants to admit that they need each other, but Sparrow was stripped of pride so thoroughly and so long ago that now he only ever puts it on to fool others, and barely feels it brush against his skin when he does.

He concedes and gets up before the man called January can let him win the game as some fucked-up sort of reward, a condescending 'good boy', or a 'there, there'.

“So what is it that you want me to find?” the man called January asks him when they stop by the door for their goodbyes. Sparrow smiles and doesn’t tell him just yet.

“So what is it that you want me to steal?”

The man called January ignores the question and points to Sparrow’s coat sleeve.

“Make sure to take it to the cleaner’s,” he tells him, the tone of his voice light like it’s but a friendly tip. “It looks like good quality wool.”

It’s _not_ good quality wool, and he must know.

“I’m sure you wouldn’t want it to stain.”

Sparrow tilts his head and lets him gloat. After all, he’s pretty sure that the man called January is not pretending not to realize that Sparrow has his black queen in the pocket of his not-at-all-expensive coat, but really has no idea.

Outside, the sky is a white canvas, and he can’t wait to see it painted red. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's okay if you guess half of my plot before I get to actually writing it. We're all here for the romance, anyway. I mean, at least I am, oops.


	8. toothmarks, november 1998

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a moral dispute

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I need to clarify something. Things that could be read as having sexual undertones happen in this chapter, but I swear, I didn't mean it like that. I promise, I'm not trying to sexualize kids, and any touch-related sentiments in this chapter are about touch-starvation and loneliness but not of the sexual sort. 
> 
> Also, this chapter's painting is actually a sculpture, oops.

Auguste Rodin, _The Clenched Hand  
_

*

An ordinary hand - just lonely for something to touch that touches back.

~Anne Sexton, _The Touch_

*

Before Jonathan Small, and before the rock, and before everything goes half-wrong, Easy finds Aubrey -- cross-legged and staring at Dora Maar -- in the library.

(Aubrey hates how out-in-the-open she is sometimes, like someone with their belly exposed, oblivious to how some people take knives to skin.)

“What’s the point?” Easy demands, looming over Aubrey and blocking his view.

“What’s the point of what?”

Easy tilts his head at Dora Maar.

“What’s the point of _art_?” Aubrey says, uncomprehending. Easy nods, and someone, somewhere, shoots a duck out of the sky.

“Well,” Aubrey says, leaning back on his arms. In the afternoon light filtering in through the stained glass, Easy look strange, like someone come to a beautiful place and not realising it. He wants to tell him, look around you, just _look_. “Hitler was rejected by Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts a few times, wasn’t he? He wrote about it in _Mein Kampf_ , that it struck him ‘as a bolt from the blue.’ He was against modern art later, said it was a degenerate product of, well, Jewish people, a threat to the German national identity, all that.”

“All that,” Easy repeats dryly. “You’ve actually read that shit?”

His father keeps a copy of _Mein Kampf_ in the house, and Aubrey hasn’t read all the books in his father’s library, but he will.

He considers Easy, that auburn light.

“I have.”

“Why the fuck?”

Aubrey smiles at the swear word and at the wrinkle between Easy’s eyebrows.

“I wanted to fully understand his rhetoric, in order to be properly against it,” he explains, feeling stupid, wanting to have never said a word, his collar too tight, his tie—

“You needed a _book_ for that?” Easy says, incredulous.

“I—” Aubrey starts, stops, doesn’t know how to explain that with his father, one had to have read _everything_. “No, I just—”

Easy’s expression softens.

“I knew all that, about him being a misunderstood artist, or whatever,” he says with a careless shrug. “December Graham should buy one of his paintings, if you ask me, and then burn it.”

“Fighting fire with fire?”

Easy’s expression is hard, and, just then, Aubrey learns something about the two of them: how he himself will grow up to be a hopeless idealist against all odds, and Easy won’t.

“What’s the point?” Easy asks again, unconvinced.

“Art is what makes us different from animals,” Aubrey says, slow, practiced. Maybe he even believes it, only _someone, somewhere, shoots a duck out of the sky._

Easy barks out a laugh, looks set on fire himself. Aubrey closes his eyes, can’t stand to see it, wonders if it hurts, remembers it’s not real.

“Not _that_ different, are we?” Easy says then, and it will take a week for Aubrey to learn that he’s right.

*

“A contest, if you will,” December Graham says, spreading her hands the way one would when accepting a flower bouquet. “Anything you like, a song, a poem, an essay, a clay figurine.”

“We should boycott it,” Kipp whispers. “I’m talentless.”

“Win, and you can have whatever you want,” December Graham says. “Well, not unicorns, but anything within the realm of possibility, you’ve got it, a pool table, a week off classes, fifty quid.”

She smiles, her lipstick too red for her complexion. She looks like someone who didn’t have a mouth and slashed their face open because they needed to say something that badly.

Kipp grips his pencil tight, tight, tighter. Aubrey watches, thinks that he’ll hurt himself.

“Ridiculous,” Alfred the librarian tells Aubrey later, during one of Aubrey’s after-class visits spent browsing books, not looking at Dora Maar, pretending not to look. “I think she’s bored.”

He says it fondly but shakes his head with exasperation. He’s putting books back on the shelves, _Dead Souls_ in hand, and when he bends down to put it on one of the lower ones – the last of the letter G – Aubrey smiles at the part in his hair, combed uneven. Alfred the librarian always looks like he’s wearing shirts just so he won’t get fired, as though he’d be walking around in stretched jumpers over flannel pyjamas all the time if he could, and there’s something honest about it that Aubrey likes, how he’ll put on a vest but won’t iron it or smooth out the wrinkles. Aubrey has spent his whole life surrounded by dinner guests who buy books for show rather than to read them, expensive, leather-bound volumes left untouched on the shelves like dressed-up people forever sitting alone at a bar, waiting to be chatted-up, and seeing Alfred always with a different book, engrossed and loving even though they’re not his, never fails to make Aubrey smile.

“Last year, she wanted kids to catch snails and organize a race, can you believe? I found her perusing encyclopaedias, trying to figure out if placing lettuce leaves a ways away would be enough to get the snails going.”

Aubrey stares, and Alfred the librarian nods vigorously, yes, really, cross my heart.

“She would have done it, too, only one girl said it’d be animal cruelty and threw a fit. And then _another_ girl said that it'd be unhygienic, and that her father would hear about it, and if she’d known she was applying to a _freak_ school… Well, you know how it goes.”

“She _should_ have known,” Aubrey says, “what with Wilgefortis for a patron saint.”

Alfred the librarian barks out a laugh and ruffles Aubrey’s hair. Aubrey stands there, feels it, doesn’t ever remember a grown man’s hand doing it before, only remembers one on his shoulder, tight, tighter, not a threat but not _not_ a threat either. 

“Anyhow, you should try your best,” Alfred the librarian advises. “It’s silly, sure, but she meant it, the granting wishes part.”

Aubrey knows what he’d ask December Graham for, a selfish request, a don’t ever sell Dora Maar, please.

He won’t get the chance to ask. He supposes he’s not without talents, if one counted referencing, grammar, and pencil-sharpening, but he doubts December Graham would. He’s no artist – he’s the person paying to stand around in museums till closing and take it all in, not the person with their signature scrawled in the bottom right corner with a fine-tipped brush.

December Graham could sit him down, hand him a crossword, and he’d fill it in, but that’s only impressive to rich parents who are too busy with social engagements to check their kids’ spelling but expect it to be flawless anyhow.

December Graham, though married, is not a mother, and Aubrey suspects she’d be an even less orthodox parent than she is a teacher.

Sometimes, Aubrey considers asking Alfred the librarian about that scholarship initiative: one orphan, one painting. The only reason why he hasn’t yet is that he suspects that Alfred the librarian is fond enough of Aubrey to actually tell him, and it seems terribly ill-mannered to Aubrey -- cruel, even -- to take advantage of that.

“Biscuit?” Alfred the librarian offers as Aubrey’s about to leave, and Aubrey shakes his head, thanks him, can live with not knowing for a little longer.

When he stops by the girls’ dormitory, he mumbles something about it being on the way, even though it’s not really on the way to anywhere. Jerusalem’s not in, and neither is Trudy Wishaw, who has the bed closest to the door and – Jerusalem swears by it – kneels every night before the lights out and prays for half an hour, a sheen of sweat on her forehead. _She never even shifts or wriggles or anything_ , Jerusalem told them the other day, dumping so much sugar in her tea that Aubrey decided to tell her all about diabetes statistics after the meal, _knees of steel, that one._

Regina is sitting on her bed, stockings off, and has the window open even though it’s quite cold outside. She has a yellow scarf with black roses pattern wound around her neck, and is in the middle of knitting it. She's almost done, too, judging by the already impressive length.

“Is that for the contest?” Aubrey asks, hesitating in the doorway. Jerusalem’s socks are scattered all over, in an uneven line leading from the door to her bed like a clumsy breadcrumb trail.

“The contest?” Regina repeats, like she doesn’t understand, and stops knitting for a second. “You mean this?”

She tugs on the scarf, and Aubrey nods.

“I’m not participating,” she says calmly and resumes knitting. Aubrey stares at her, surprised. She could make so many lovely things— gloves, for one. December Graham always wears a different pair, constantly pulling on the fabric but hardly ever taking them off.

Gloves, a scarf, a carpet, anything.

“Whyever not?”

Regina considers him but doesn’t stop knitting this time. She has a tendency to stare at people like she can’t tell that it makes them uncomfortable, or hasn’t been taught that making others feel purposely uncomfortable is rude – both unlikely, considering her upbringing. Aubrey keeps himself from averting his gaze because, after a month, he shouldn’t feel the need to.

“I don’t need anything,” Regina tells him with a shrug, and Aubrey laughs soundlessly.

“Surely you _want_ something, though,” he says, uneasy. Not needing anything makes him think of his father, how he spent decades being denied things in order to make himself into someone who wouldn’t be denied anymore, not again, not ever. “A bicycle, a pass to walk all over the school after curfew, a— _some_ thing.”

“I want things, yes,” Regina admits. She's not looking at him anymore, and it's a relief. “I don’t _need_ them.”

Reggie often wears bulky jumpers after classes, and it occurs to Aubrey that she must have made all of them herself, no exception. He doesn’t know much about his friends’ families, and where with Jerusalem and Kipp it seems to be because they find the topic boring, with Quickly and Regina it’s more a case of careful omission, only what’s there to omit?

As for Easy—

Well.

When Regina says that she doesn’t need things, it sounds like something’s been censored from the sentence, an ‘anymore’ or a ‘because I refuse to.’

Aubrey’s glad that she doesn’t ask him why he came to see her, because he realizes only now: how he’s been uneasy, wanting to ask December Graham to keep _Dora Maar au Chat_ forever, and knowing he never would, and how Regina is not unlike a cold lake, calming, calm herself.

He waves bye, and feels stupid about having been wrong.

*

He doesn’t tell Easy that he’s not participating for the longest time, partly because Easy never asks, and partly because Aubrey keeps repeating the mistake of forgetting that Easy might care, over and over. They’re friends, sure, one for all, all for one, but sometimes, when they’re all together, it still feels like Easy doesn’t fit in the same as the rest, as if their group is more shared parenting than friendship.

Still, in the end, Easy does ask.

They’re on their way to dinner when he stops by one of the statues placed in the corridor and stubbornly stares it in the eyes like a challenge. Aubrey can’t help but think that he’ll grow up to be the kind of person who starts bar fights and can’t reconcile the notion with another belief of his: that Easy will grow up to be the kind of person who doesn’t ever go to bars.

“Why is he missing his—?”

“Jason,” Aubrey says hurriedly. “I mean, I assume that’s Absyrtus. He was Medea’s brother, killed by Jason and— that’s boring.”

It’s _not_ boring, but Aubrey has come to understand that not everybody cares about mythology and all that.

“Oh, go on,” Easy says, irritated, waving his hand at Aubrey, something almost aristocratic about the gesture. It occurs to Aubrey that if he never opened his mouth, people would readily assume Easy to be another spoiled heir to a fortune, vacationing in Monte Carlo and tearing heads off his sister’s dolls because she has too many of them to notice the difference. The uniform is the same for everyone, after all, no rips, no patches.

“He killed him, Jason did. Cut off the extremities, licked and spat out his blood three times. Spat it into Absyrtus’s mouth, actually. He put him in the ground and— well, maschalismos. It was to make sure he wouldn’t be able to haunt him after death.”

Easy stares at the statue, the lines around his eyes softening.

“It makes me _sick_.”

“It’s just mythology,” Aubrey says meekly, hoping to make it better. He wishes he could keep himself from listing off facts and _think_ sometimes. Little Ezra Weiss, twelve years old, sending letters to his friend disguised as letters to a mouse, not knowing how to spell ‘apparently’, and Aubrey so eager to prove that he knows things to anyone that will listen, telling him about licking blood off corpses. “It didn’t _really_ happen.”

“Sure it did,” Easy snaps, hands curled into fists. “It’s enough that someone thought of putting it in a story— What, you think nothing like this ever happened?”

Little Ezra Weiss.

Aubrey tries to think of something to say, something that would console Easy without him realising it’s meant to be consoling. He comes up blank.

Easy’s shoulders relax, less calm, more resignation.

“Anyway, how do you remember all that stuff?” Easy asks, eyeing him with suspicion. Aubrey looks away, hating the scrutiny.

“I have to know it all,” he say quietly, knowing that Easy won’t ask him about his father, not necessarily because he’s not interested, but because Easy has a way of turning everything into an argument rather than an investigation. Aubrey expects him to try and prove Aubrey wrong rather than asking why he’d say something like that in the first place, and when Easy speaks next, he’s proven right.

“What does that mean, you _have_ to? If someone told you to fly and then threw you off a cliff, you’d _have_ to fly to save yourself, but you _wouldn’t_ , because humans don’t have wings, just like they’re not walking libraries.”

Aubrey almost tells him all about how he hasn’t slept more than five hours at a time in years, all about how he repeats Shakespeare’s sonnets to himself in the shower, all about how he divides food on his plate into careful amounts of bites that serve as a reminder of the dates of important historical events.

“If someone tells you to fly and then throws you off a cliff,” he says in a measured voice, “you find a way to stay up in the air.”

Easy frowns, frowns, smiles.

“What are you going to ask December Graham for when you win?”

When, not if.

“I’m not going to win,” Aubrey says, suddenly feeling small. “I’m not participating.”

Easy makes a face.

“That’s _stupid_.”

“It’s what it is,” Aubrey says lamely. He shrugs, too, and it feels awkward, like he’s adjusting a bag even though he doesn’t have one with him, because he never allows himself gestures like this.

“What _would_ you ask her for, then?”

“What-ifs are a waste of time,” Aubrey says, automatic.

“We can waste half a minute,” Easy , and he sosaysunds so serious that Aubrey surprises himself by laughing.

“I’d ask her to— to never ever— not to sell—” he stammers, trying to get it right.

“Ah,” Easy says with dawning understanding. “The cat lady?”

“Yes,” Aubrey agrees with a sigh. “Dora Maar.”

Easy scowls and they don’t talk about it again. A week later, Easy wins the contest even though no one ever knew what he'd submitted, or that he had submitted anything, for that matter. December Graham announces it in class, smiles at Easy, says, ask away, and Easy doesn’t, like it’s a secret.

The day after, they’re all waiting for something grand, streamers, scones after dinner instead of apples, a party in the entrance hall, Easy on a trip to Brighton, desk empty during classes, but nothing happens. 

“I can’t believe you won,” Kipp whines, stretched across the table at dinner with a pained expression. “What did you even submit? I won’t believe you have any talents until I see it.”

Easy goes on munching on a piece of chicken, unperturbed. Aubrey remembers that drawing of his, the one based on which December Graham had him admitted to Wilgefortis, the one she trusted Aubrey enough with to hand it over to him for a minute.

The one that causes him to curl up into a ball whenever he thinks of it during sleepless nights.

“Have you used the wish already?” Jerusalem asks, wide-eyed. “You should have asked for more wishes, you know.”

“I doubt Mrs. Graham would appreciate that,” Quickly says.

Jerusalem grins. “Oh, I think she _would_.”

“I have used it, yes,” Easy says, fork scraping on the plate. “And don’t bother asking. I’m not telling.”

Jerusalem groans, Kipp bangs his head on the table, Regina looks up from her knitting, interested, and Quickly gawks.

Aubrey stays quiet. He wouldn’t have asked even if Easy hadn’t said not to, after all.

*

Jonathan Small has been shoving them aside in the corridors for weeks, ever since the newsboy cap riot, and the dead frog and ham slices in his textbooks, unable to prove it had been one of them but smart enough to know it _had_.

When Easy wins the contest, and when December Graham fails to explain why, Jonathan Small gets bored of shoving them around.

They’re sitting outside, the day warm enough to spread a blanket on the ground but cold enough to warrant scarves. Easy, clad in a variety of Regina’s knitting projects, complains about the sun, whining about how it’s making his eyes water and could they all just go back to school, _please_? Jerusalem grabs his cheek between two fingers, tells him that he needs all the vitamin D he can get, and shoves fallen leaves in his mouth. Easy screeches, yells insults, and then spits the leaves out, exactly in that order.

“I can’t bear to think that he’ll grow up one day,” Kipp says, heaving a sigh and playing the role of a melancholic mother. “Whatever will become of him?”

Aubrey is reading his way through _Swann’s Way_ \--ha -- and trying to ignore them.

“Hey, let’s go bribe Quickly to come here,” Jerusalem says, nudging Kipp with her elbow and already dusting off her skirt.

Quickly is near allergic to the outdoors, and even more difficult to convince to go outside than Easy. He claims grass makes him sneeze, even though they’ve been on the school grounds with him enough times to know it’s lie, and for him to know that they know it’s a lie. This afternoon, he barricaded himself inside the dormitory and told Kipp and Aubrey that he would only let them back in after an hour and with their arms held above their heads, too, all through the already shut door.

“What will you bribe him with?” Kipp says sceptically, already getting up nonetheless. 

“I still haven’t eaten my apple,” Jerusalem tells him, flashing a smile. “Or we can collect Pigtails on the way. I still maintain that he’s in love with her.”

Kipp shakes his head but follows her back towards the school. Regina picks a leaf out of Easy’s hair and smiled when he scowls at her.

“Why, if it isn’t the little freaks!” someone calls out, and Aubrey recognizes Jonathan Small’s hoarse voice right away. It’s breaking, Jonathan’s voice, caught between a childish screech and something deeper and almost grown-up, and when Aubrey looks up, he doesn’t need to shield his eyes against the sun to know that it’s him. He’s accompanied by two other boys whose names Aubrey learned long ago and then took great care to forget, as a statement of a sort. Not _much_ of a statement, considering no one would ever know, but he felt strangely elated and proud of himself after unlearning something on purpose anyway.

Next to him, Easy groans, and even Regina lets out a heavy sigh. Aubrey considers calling back with some clever retort about being predictable and about the abuse of the word ‘freaks,’ how the repetition is unimaginative and how if it was a school essay, the word would be circled in red.

It’s not an essay, so he stays quiet instead.

“Hey, Weiss!” Jonathan Small calls out this time, pronouncing it wrong. Aubrey wants to believe it’s because he doesn’t know any better, but he’s pretty sure Jonathan is doing it on purpose, to rile Easy up. Rile him up he does, Easy already almost foaming at the mouth. “How’s that sweet win of yours? No word of it, eh?" Jonathan goes on. "What, did you ask Graham to give you a kiss?” He puckers his lips and makes a sucking sound as Regina grabs the hem of Easy’s scarf to keep him still.

Jonathan is holding a football, and Aubrey wonders if he’d have even noticed them, had they spread the blanket a few feet to the left.

“Can’t believe a little wanker like you would win,” Jonathan goes on, kicking the ball up, catching it, kicking it up, catching it. “What talents could you have? I bet you’ve been eating mouse droppings all your life, hardly enough protein to make you smart, hmm? And here I was, getting up three days in a row at fucking 6 a.m. to paint her a bloody sunrise—”

Aubrey remembers seeing it, all angry orange and molten gold, and wonders how it is that Hitler could paint, and Lavinia reads Russian writers, and Jonathan Small cares about sunrises.

“I DON’T EAT MOUSE DROPPINGS, YOU STUPID PISS-SNIFFER!” Easy yells. Aubrey has to help Regina with holding him down, the small body struggling, writhing, like it’s death itself trying to take him, and he won’t have it. “GO AWAY YOU FUCKING MONKEY-FUCKER, AND POOR MONKEYS, TOO!”

Jonathan Small bursts out laughing.

“How poetic!” he drawls. “Come on, Weiss, you know yourself that you didn’t deserve any prizes, just like you don’t deserve to be here in the first place. It’s very charitable of Graham, sure, taking you poor orphans in, but, in the end, it will only hold us back, and bump as down a place or two in the rankings.”

“I’M NOT STUPID, YOU— YOU— YOU FUCKING WINDSCREEN WIPER!”

“Oh?” Jonathan says innocently, arching an eyebrow, just one. He kicks up the football, catches it, kicks it up, catches it. “What’s the capital city of Belgium, then?”

For a moment, Easy goes perfectly still. Aubrey doesn’t dare let go of his sleeve. He thinks he makes a sound, a helpless whine in the back of his throat, when he sees the hopeless despair all over Easy’s face. He feels something _wrench_ inside him like a feral animal trying to scratch its way out of forced burial as he watches Easy stare and shake -- _God_ , how he shakes.

“Well?” Jonathan says, and Easy stutters, not a word, not a syllable, just sounds mashed together, a helpless whine. “I thought so.”

Easy is quiet, is still, is quiet, is still, and then startles again, almost throwing them off.

“THAT’S JUST ONE STUPID THING, AND WHO CARES ABOUT BELGIUM ANYWAY, AND—”

If they had time, and if Jonathan Small wasn’t here, Aubrey would remind Easy that he _does_ know things, and that he has a forever of time to learn them anyway.

They don’t have time, and Jonathan Small _is_ here.

“When was The Battle of Hastings, then? What has to happen for a mule to be born? Who was the first king of England? What’s Monet’s most famous painting?”

 _Open Sea_ above Easy’s bed, not important enough to make it into textbooks.

Easy’s shoulders slump and Aubrey has to choke anger down like bile, hasn’t felt it in—

Hasn't felt it in _so long_.

“That’s enough,” he says, trying to sound firm. He squeezes Easy’s shoulder, but Easy’s wearing so many layers that he probably doesn’t even feel it. “Just leave us alone, would you?”

“ _Just leave us alone, would you_?” Jonathan mocks in a high voice and then kicks the football, only not up this time. When it hits Aubrey in the face, it’s so sudden that, for a moment, he can’t tell what happened, his head ringing. He stares at his hands, hears someone yell, close but far away, and his hands are funny, floaty, like they’re not attached to his body, and oh, what’s that red thing, drip drip dripping?

“Fuck, fuck, _fuck_! Reggie, he’s _bleeding_ —”

“Shsh, hold his head down, I’ll go get someone—”

“No, don’t _leave_ , what if he _dies_ , Reggie, _what if he dies_ —”

“ _I’m fine_ ,” Aubrey manages, because he _is_. His head is still spinning, yes, and his nose is bleeding, yes, but he’s _fine_. His hands are attached to his body after all, and he can turn his head and smile at Easy, and he can hear Jonathan laughing in his breaking, breaking boy-voice. “I’m fine.”

Regina runs off in the direction of the school anyway, and Easy looks— He looks scared, hands shaking, eyes wide. He looks _terrified_. 

“Little nerd,” Jonathan slurs some feet away. “Serves you right.”

Something snaps in Easy just then. Aubrey recognizes it, even though he can’t see it, like a sound or a smell. Next thing he knows, Easy is getting up, next thing he knows, Easy is grabbing for a jagged rock, next thing he knows Easy is holding a jagged rock, next thing he knows, Easy is drawing his arm back, ready to throw, next thing he knows is Jonathan’s eyes are growing wide, wider, wider.

Next thing he knows, he’s up himself, fingers around Easy’s wrist, and when he feels Easy’s cold skin, a contrast to the warm blood Aubrey has smeared all over his hand, he realises that it’s the first time he’s really touched Easy. He caught him under the armpits that first day in the train, and then Easy said something about not being a shelf, fell asleep on top of him, and Aubrey didn’t touch him again. He wasn’t _allowed_ to. He held Easy back not two minutes ago, sure, but all those layers, jumpers and coats— It’s the first time he really touches him, because _he’s not allowed to_.

Easy turns to stare at him, still gripping the rock, and, feet away, Jonathan and his friends watch them and don’t dare move. Aubrey feels Easy’s wrist, feels his pulse -- fast, fast, too fast, that can’t be healthy -- thinks, radius, thinks, ulna, thinks, lunate, thinks, scaphoid, feels the bones shift.

Easy won’t look away and Aubrey won’t either. He feels the blood dripping from his nose, and tastes it in the back of his throat, too, like that time kids in his old school forced him to swallow six dirty 2p coins, one by one.

He could squeeze harder, make it hurt, cause Easy to drop the roc. Oh yes, he could, he could, but he won’t, he wouldn’t, he would _never._

His father—

Aubrey doesn’t remember the last time he touched someone and almost wants them all to stay like this, in this checkmate, so he can feel it a for little while longer. He thinks that this is what getting electrocuted would feel like, if getting electrocuted was slow and sweet, if it felt _good_.

He wants—

He shakes out of it.

“Don’t,” he says simply.

“This piece of shit—” Easy starts, and Aubrey talks right over him.

“And so what, you’ll _stone_ him? Are you insane? You could kill him like this, Ezra. Fighting fire with fire, after all? Don’t you _dare_ throw this rock.”

He sounds cruel, even to his own ears, and he wonders if Easy feels betrayed. His stupid, small, loyal— friend.

“He _broke your nose_!”

“He didn’t _break_ it, I don’t think. And so what if he did, anyway? Eye for an eye, is that how you want to live? You can do _better_.”

He’ll regret saying it later.

He regrets saying it _now_.

“ _Let go of me_ —” Easy barks, struggling to free his wrist, and Aubrey tries to breathe, tries to keep him still without hurting him, can’t ever hurt him, can’t ever hurt _anyone_ —

“Drop the rock and I will.”

Easy stares at him, unbelieving, and Aubrey desperately wants to fix it, to help Easy remember the capital city of Belgium, say, you hate _Brussels_ sprouts, don’t you?

Easy drops the rock and Aubrey forgets to let go for a second, because skin, because pulse, because _touch_ , and Easy makes a wounded, animal noise, and bites his hand.

Aubrey yelps, lets go, feels Easy’s teeth break skin.

Touch, too, this.

He shakes out his hand, wipes the blood off his face with his sleeve, and doesn’t watch Easy storm off. Jonathan Small and his friends jog off in silence, forget the football. Aubrey kicks it down the hill, and stares at the bitemark at the base of his thumb, watching fresh blood well up.

He wonders if Easy will ever speak to him again. 

*

Later, whenever the blood wells up, Aubrey brushes his lips against the bite, flicks his tongue out and licks it clean. He doesn’t think about it, tells himself that it’s just like sucking on a papercut, that he always does it when he’s hurt, only he never licks off the blood clotted above his mouth after the nosebleed.

He goes to sleep early and doesn’t sleep, spends the night awake, feeling the bite sting and throb, _liking_ it. Not invisible after all, because invisible boys don’t get bitten. Not invisible, not soundless, not bodyless, present, there, there, _there._ He presses on the mark until he hisses with pain, and hopes it will leave a scar. When he falls asleep at last, it’s to the pleasant throbbing that distracts him from everything he ever was and failed to be.

*

The next day, Aubrey keeps worrying at the bitemark with his mouth, even though it’s no longer bleeding. Easy doesn’t catch him do it, because he’s not there for breakfast, doesn’t look over during class, doesn’t wait for Aubrey after.

Aubrey heads to the library after biology, because if he doesn’t see Dora Maar, he’ll go crazy. He walks towards it after saying hi to Alfred the librarian, and he’s between two bookcases when he hears someone talking in a pleasant voice.

“…And then I told him that he was being unreasonable, and did he think I was stupid, and he blushed in blotches, you know, like some terrible allergic reaction— Oh, hello there, Aubrey.”

December Graham is standing in his spot, talking to _Dora Maar au Chat_ with a smile.

“H— Yes, hello,” Aubrey says, caught off guard. It occurs to him that out of the two of them, it’s her who ought to be startled.

“We were just catching up,” December Graham tells him, pointing between Dora Maar and herself. “I seem to have neglected Dora here a little.”

Aubrey makes an interested sound, hoping she’ll go on. She doesn’t seem to have heard about his nose or at least doesn’t seem about to mention it. When Regina came back with the school nurse in tow yesterday, Aubrey knew that he couldn’t tell her that it had been Jonathan, knew Jonathan would have said it had been an accident, Miss, I swear! Would have mentioned Easy throwing rocks, too. There were no trees around, but the nurse didn’t question it when Aubrey said he had tripped over a bough.

“I was, of course, inspired by little Ezra’s wish,” December Graham goes on, oblivious, and Aubrey tilts his head, confused. Easy’s wish? She clearly assumes Aubrey must know all about it, flashing a conspiratorial smile. “I expected him to ask me to let him keep a hamster in the dormitory, or something of that sort, rather than to promise to keep this lady here safe. Who would have thought?”

Aubrey stares at her, doesn’t understand, _does_ , digs his fingers into the barely healed bite mark and _revels_ in the pain.

He almost starts arguing, impossible, you've got it all wrong, Easy _wouldn’t_. It’s not that Easy’s a bad friend, but he’s not instinctively selfless—

It dawns on him slowly, that Easy did this for him even though it’s not in his nature, that he must have wanted a hamster, or ice cream, or God knows what, and refused to ask for it, thought of doing this for Aubrey, hated the idea, did it anyway.

“I think he has a crush on her, poor dear,” December Graham says in a hushed voice, nodding at the painting and smiling like it’s a secret. Aubrey almost laughs at how very wrong she is, except he can’t be sure if she isn’t only pretending not to understand. “Anyway, I should get going. Have to call my husband, the bastard.”

She walks past him, waves her fingers, leaves him alone with his thoughts, and what kind of a teacher is she when—

Aubrey slides to the ground, back to the bookcase, and frantically worries at the bite mark with his teeth, feeling something rising in his chest, panic swelling like out-of-control dough, until the wound reopens, and he finally breathes, breathes, oh, _breathes_.

*

He doesn’t know if he stopped Easy from throwing that rock because of moral principles, or because he knew throwing it would get Easy in trouble -- expelled, even. He tries to remember, but he can’t think, the bite mark pulsing like nothing else has ever been important.

*

In the dream, he has his head in Regina’s lap, and she’s carding her fingers through his hair, because in the dream, they’re brother and sister and no one will make up a stupid rhyme about them being in love.

They grew up together in that big, big house full of draughts, and they still had to know everything, but at least they could split everything in two and share.

He’s wearing socks she knit him, and a jumper she knit him, and trousers she sewed for him, and his father hasn't bought a single thing he's wearing. 

“What’s this?” Regina asks, and they’re similar to each other -- he almost has her wet smile, she almost has his sesame-seed-coloured hair. She touches the bite mark at the base of Aubrey’s thumb, a worried wrinkle between her eyebrows. “What happened?”

“It’s proof that I exist,” Aubrey tells her and then falls asleep, which is to say, wakes up.

*

Aubrey avoids Easy, and avoids Regina, who already has a brother. 

She told him all about the kid once, twelve years younger, learning to walk.

“I thought they weren’t touching each other anymore,” she told Aubrey once, referring to her parents, knees circled with her arms. It made Aubrey think of his own parents, how— He called his mother, later, and while she was telling him all about how she was going around the neighbourhood, gifting people burned cake and winning against them in card games, he couldn’t help but imagine her like a photograph handled by careless hands – so many fingerprints that you could barely see what was in it.

*

When Aubrey knocks on the door to December Graham’s office, he expects her to call out for him to enter, but she opens the door herself, wisps of hair in her face, and invites him inside with an exaggerated bow and a wave of her hand.

Inside, there’s only one painting, Munch’s _Woman in Blue against Blue Water_ framed gold.

“I don’t like hoarding them all to myself,” December explains, as if she’s read Aubrey’s thoughts. “I like them admired, see? Though I suppose that’s proprietary in its own way, flaunting paintings like men do with their wives, and I should know better since I’ve had it done to me myself.”

She points to the chair opposite her desk, and takes a seat behind it, kicking her stockinged feet up on the desk. She reminds Aubrey of his mother in some distant, painful way – the same carefree spirit hiding some troubled depths, the same suggestion of strength underneath.

The office walls are painted cornflower blue and the room is cramped, full of knick-knacks: a chipped porcelain bulldog, a hand made of clay with colourful rings on its fingers, a pipe painted red and green. There’s a Venetian mask on one of the walls, mouth cut into a disturbing smile, a feathery boa wrapped around a sculpted torso— no head – and an old-fashioned lampshade. It feels homely, as if, by making the room ridiculous, December Graham made it fully hers.

“How can I help you, Aubrey Allen?” December Graham says, watching him with amusement. She takes her feet off the desk, turns in her chair, chin in hands, as if to say, I’m all ears.

“Right,” Aubrey says clumsily, tugging on his tie. “Is there any way— I wanted –- Could I see that drawing? The one that made Ezra win?”

December Graham blinks at him curiously.

“Oh,” she says, and then straightens in her chair. “Would little Ezra want you to see it?”

“Probably not,” Aubrey admits and attempts to remember everything that living under one roof with his father taught him. “I’d like to see it nonetheless.”

“I like you, you know,” December Graham tells him, tilting her head and giving him a brilliant smile. “I have this feeling that you’ll grow up to wear cosy bathrobes and auction for paintings just like me.”

Aubrey doesn’t tell her that he thinks he’s missed all his pivotal moments, and that he’s done all his growing up already. He suspects it wouldn’t sound very reasonable, coming from a thirteen-year-old.

“You don’t wear bathrobes,” he says instead, instantly feeling stupid. December Graham smiles at him with fondness.

“I would, if I could.”

He doesn’t know what to do with that information. He thought she already did whatever she wanted. He thought that she could do anything.

“Alright, then, let’s see,” December says, taking a key out of her pocket and opening one of her desk drawers. “Here,” she whispers, handing the drawing over, blank-side-up.

Aubrey shakes his head. “I meant it when I said Ezra probably wouldn’t want me to see it.”

December Graham regards him seriously, nods.

“I tend to think of myself the way some writers think of themselves,” she tells him, leaning back. “Like they’re privy to any and all secrets just because they’re not to judge or interact, but simply observe. It’s arrogant, is what it is, like playing God but pretending to be humble. If the world is a painting, I fancy myself the museum visitor, staring at it from behind a red sash. Something tells me you’re the same, Aubrey Allen, and not recognising it, not letting you— It would be hypocrisy on my part.”

Aubrey thinks about it, how if he were to be outside of the painting, that would place him in the same realm as its author. Playing God, indeed, only he never thought of it that way – not as observing, just as half-chosen exclusion.

He turns the drawing over and doesn’t let his fingers shake.

A perfect copy of _Dora Maar au Chat_ , only smaller, only pencil, only black-and-white.

“He handed it over and said ‘I want you to keep her as my reward’ as if he knew he’d win,” December Graham says, shaking her head with a smile. “Wonderful, isn’t it?”

Aubrey considers telling her how it’s not Easy who’s in love with Dora Maar but decides to stay away from the story for a little longer. He considers asking to have the drawing, too, but knows that he doesn’t deserve it.

After he leaves her office, he stands with his back to the door for a moment, remembering the betrayal all over Easy’s face, that rock in his hand.

Aubrey was careful with the drawing, but there’s a smudge of grey on his fingertips, anyway. When he washes his hands later, he carefully soaps his skin around it, and hates himself.

*

It takes a week of Aubrey quietly offering Easy his portion of chicken, letting him pass first whenever they leave a room, and lending him his class notes (nothing he wasn’t doing before, if not so often, and he’s frustrated with himself for having been nice enough that the contrast is not sufficient) for Easy to finally look directly at him.

“I’m not mad anymore, alright?” he says, and Aubrey is not so self-centred as to think that the bags under Easy’s eyes are his fault. Later the same evening, he learns that they really aren’t.

“He came in a few days ago,” Alfred the librarian tells Aubrey with an amused smile. “Asking me about the most difficult books I’d ever read. I start pulling them off the shelves, _Ulysses_ , _Paradise Lost_ , _Heart of Darkness_ , _The Brothers Karamazov_ , _Gravity’s Rainbow_ , _The Magic Mountain_ , _The Castle_ , all that. When I finish, the kid’s holding a stack so impressive that I can only see the top of his head, all those curls, and he goes, I want them. I’m confused, and I tell him, well, now, you can only check out three books at a time when you’re a first-year, and you know what he says? He moves his head to the side so I can see him from behind that tower of books, all angry, and goes, I’m December Graham’s _favourite_. You don’t want to cross me, believe me. Now, Aubrey, I have to tell you, I was a bit disappointed to hear that, because see, I 'd thought _I_ was her favourite. Anyway, I made an exception because I knew he was your friend and that, therefore, I could trust him with the books.”

Aubrey finds Easy in his dormitory ten minutes later, frowning at the first page of _Lolita._ He wants to tell him that he doesn’t have to do this, that he needn’t be like Aubrey, terrified that someone will catch him not knowing something, that he should just be Easy and should make it be enough, but he remembers December Graham denying herself hypocrisy and only stares, helpless.

Who cares about the capital city of Belgium, only Easy clearly does, a scrawny little thing in an oversized newsboy cap, tracing the letters with his finger because the print is too small.

*

Once, two married couples over for dinner, Aubrey’s father said: you haven’t read _The Trial_? How embarrassing.

Aubrey couldn’t say that he’d read all those other books, hundreds of books, because it didn’t matter, so he just sat there, immobilized, and let himself be laughed at and painted stupid.

*

He thinks of leaving a herring inside Jonathan Small’s shoe.

He doesn’t.

He thinks of adding mayonnaise to Jonathan Small’s shampoo.

He doesn’t.

He thinks of putting slugs under Jonathan Small’s pillow.

He doesn’t.

*

“ _The Tower of Blue Horses_ ,” December Graham tells them, sat on the desk and, for once, not swinging her legs like a small girl. “Missing since the war.”

She shows them a copy, printed in an old book, and Easy’s pencil bends in his hand, doesn’t break.

“Either four separate horses, or a repetition of the successive movements of a single horse,” December Graham says, strangely quiet. “What do you think?”

Jerusalem says, four.

Easy says, just one.

Aubrey will remember it years later, and wonder if it was the first clue he missed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been obsessed with The Tower of Blue Horses for months, am trying to put it in literally all of my writing projects, and it will play a huge part in this story. 
> 
> Also, apart from funky chapters like the one with the letters or the interlude, I will post a Christmas one next and after that the story will speed up a bit, not in terms of action, not yet, but in terms of the time jumps. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!! <3


	9. paper scraps, 1998

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _They’re not even ATROCIOUSLY boring, it’s just they won’t scale the roofs with me, and I simply have no other use for friendship_ , or, a few diary entries and a few marginalia.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, let's talk romance. Obviously, there's the main relationship which will be the slowest burn to ever burn (to ever slow?), and it's pretty clear whom it will involve, but there'll be other relationships, too. One thing worth mentioning is that there won't be any in-group dating because it would be so messy and I just want them all to be friends (with that one exception, of course). Still, some of these kids are gay, some of them aren't, and there'll be all different kinds of ships, some of them important, some less so, and hopefully none will be too irritating. But anyway, there won't be like a bunch of crazy love triangles except for one brief mess of a situation, because I d e s p i s e love triangles (unless it's a polyamory situation, but writing about two characters liking each other is already enough of a challenge to drive me to madness, so not in this particular story)!. Long live friendship, anyway. 
> 
> As for this chapter, it's what you could call a filler, but I had fun writing it.

_From Jerusalem Young’s diary (a simple lined notebook with flowers pressed between the pages, blots of ink all over, and an ancient curse scrawled on the first page):_

12th September 1998

Christ Almighty, but everyone here is boring! I feel bad about teasing Easy (who looks like a choleric scarecrow and acts like a drugged Chihuahua, and is, therefore, very teasable) all the time, but the people here won’t even go swim in the lake with me so what’s a girl to do? First-years are not allowed, but from second year onwards I’m joining the theatre clowns and fully intend to play Hamlet or Romeo, or, I don’t know. I’d settle for Paris, I suppose, but nothing less!

They’re not even ATROCIOUSLY boring, it’s just they won’t scale the roofs with me, and I simply have no other use for friendship.

There’s Quickly, who thinks that everyone born after the Chernobyl disaster is stuffed with radiation like Tudor Christmas Pie is stuffed with birds, which, personally, I think is very bird-ist of him. He also thinks that he’ll get tetanus from a papercut, and the other day Aubrey asked him if he’d ever considered if perhaps it’s not that he has all those illnesses but that the one illness he has is the conviction that he has all those other illnesses (it was one hell of a sentence), to which Quickly said, very irritably: WELL, OF COURSE I KNOW I’M A HIPOCHONDRIAC, AND WON’T ACTUALLY DIE FROM THIS, BUT THAT DOESN’T CHANGE THE FACT THAT I’M GOING TO DIE FROM THIS!

Then there’s Regina, who knits, and knits, and also knits. I think she writes poetry, too, but she refuses to show it to me, so it’s probably something perverted about the school librarian. “Oh, Alfred, your hair lit afire like a funeral pyre!” or something like that, only about pubic hair. I mean, she’s alright. She stares out the window a lot, which is a bit spooky, but at least she doesn’t want to marry Jesus like the other roommate.

There’s Aubrey, too, and he’s the biggest bore of them all. He’s swallowed all the Oxford dictionaries and all the encyclopaedias ever written, too. Sometimes it takes him a while to reply, and he just stands there, blinking at you, like someone dropped him when he was little and he's never recovered. Oh, and he dresses like a gay uncle. Not that I have a gay uncle (or DO I?) or know what one would dress like but… Well, he dresses like Aunt Mildred would dress if she was a man, I know that much. Chic it ain’t.

And, at last, Ezra Weiss, the little annoyance, teeth sharp from gnawing on orphanage furniture, I’m sure (they don’t feed kids there, do they? He’s all skin and bones and I don’t suspect he’ll grow much taller) and he knows how to use them, too. All his sleeves look like he’s hiding a puppy in his closet, or maybe a toddler with its first teeth growing in. The other day he insisted that he could water the plant on the biology classroom wardrobe all by himself, he WOULD reach it, NO, HE WAS NOT TOO SHORT, shut up, Jerusalem, and, wouldn’t you know it, he dropped the watering can and the water spilled all over him. ALL OVER. He looked like a very offended, very wet little mouse.

Oh, and there’s the newest addition, too: Kipp Birdwhistle, who always half-heartedly flirts with girls he doesn’t know in the corridors. He will stop them and say “Excuse me, do you know where’s the— wow, but you have beautiful eyes! 'I, who am made of wax, turn to fire!'” They either roll their eyes and walk away, or swoon, the girls, but Kipp always seems uninterested after saying his bit regardless of the result. I’m not proud of what I did yesterday ~~(SO proud)~~ but it needed to be done. I put my hand on his throat, and held a watering can near his crotch. We were already late for math, and he admitted EVERYTHING. “It’s Petrarch, it’s Petrarch! I learn his best lines in the morning, and practice in front of the mirror, like an idiot! Here, 'Her aspect was so sweet and proud/I left all my labour to follow her/as a miser, in search of treasure,/makes his toil lose its bitterness in delight'.”

Feeling rather charitable, I let him go.

(Actually, it wasn’t charity. I just figure blackmailing him will be fun.)

Anyway, where are the friends that would help me steal liquor from the teachers’ cabinets, discover secret passages, and find El Dorado? I’m fine with these nerds for now (even if AA gives me a colonisation lecture every time I dare mention the gold hunts) but I’ll run out of patience soon, and who knows what will happen then?

*

_From Regina Stranger’s journal (leather-bound, old, scratched, with yellowed pages, once a 1994 calendar):_

If I cut off my hand,

I’d still have the other one

If I cut off my leg,

I’d still have the other one

If I didn’t have the other one

(and why not? bones, and no-more-bones, and being fond of knives)

I could crawl

But I wouldn’t crawl

I’d just sit and cry and hate the crying and would put my eyes out and would lick the tears off

And who’s to say they wouldn’t take the tongue, too

So I’m keeping everything

Because they won’t notice it’s still there

But I would notice if it weren’t

So I’m keeping everything or at least some things

And there’s nothing to it, just how hands are like knives and you can be fond of them too

Even if they’re yours and fond-less

They’re yours.

*

_From Kipp Birwhistle’s ~~diary~~ journal (a lined notebook, doodles all over the margins and “(dec)ember?” written on the inside of the cover, covered-up with a dried four-leaf clover):_

9th September 1998

She was right there, Joseph-Désiré Court’s _Rigolette_ , so much like December Graham that I almost believed in time travel. Just then, I remembered why Aubrey Allen had seemed so familiar the first time I saw him, and figured we should be friends, him and I.

I’m positive he doesn’t remember me from before Wilgefortis, which is just as well. Busy with him and Easy, December Graham might not care who I am just yet but, soon, she will.

(She doesn’t remember me, either, I don’t think, which is just as well, too.)

I thought of something at night, when I couldn’t sleep, how if I stole a painting from her and gave it back later, she’d like me so much more than she would if I never stole one in the first place. 

Still, I won’t steal a thing. Eye for an eye, goodness for goodness. AA hates the law of retaliation, but what he doesn’t understand is that there are two sides to every coin.

He will understand eventually, I’m sure.

*

 _From Jerusalem Young’s diary:_

13th October 1998

OH I COULD JUST KILL HIM, STUPID JONATHAN SMALL, SHOULD BE NAMED SMALL DICK, SHAME HIS NAME IS NOT RICHARD.

I’m going to pretend to be sick in class, and I’ll excuse myself, toilet, Miss, be right back, and then I’ll sneak into his dormitory and I’ll steal his underwear and I’ll dump it in the dirtiest toilet I’ll find, and then I’ll leave it somewhere to dry. While he’ll be eating dinner, I’ll sneak the then-dry underwear back to his room, and he’ll never know, but I’ll always, always know, and maybe I’ll tell him, weeks, months, years from now, and God, I can’t wait to see his face when I do.

Anyway, what’s one to do when one gets her first period at a boarding school? Where’s mother when you need her? Can I collect the blood and slip it into Jonathan Small’s soup?

Worth considering. Hmmm.

*

_A crossed-out margin-note sequence from Aubrey Allen’s notebook:_

What if there was a painting frame on the ground, empty and big enough to fit you, and you curled up inside it and turned flat, and someone would overturn you, blank-side-up, and you’d stay there, invisible, trapped against the ground? Would it feel good? Would it feel bad?

What if you did it to someone else? Would it feel like shooting birds out of the sky? Better? Worse?

Why is the sky blue, anyway, except for how I know why it’s blue, except for how there is no sky, not really, and that’s why we need umbrellas.

Umbrella – Latin root word ‘umbra,’ shade or shadow. Normalized for men by one Jonas Hanway and later referred to by English gentlemen as ‘Hanway’ for quite a while.

Anyway, if you were flat, then, when observed from the side, it’d be like you didn’t exist.

*

_From Regina Stranger’s journal:_

I make my own scarves because then they didn’t pay for it, only then they still paid for the wool. Is this why girls do stupid things?

Jerusalem is on fire because she’s a lamp and not a cigarette. Quickly wouldn’t go near a match if I paid him, Kipp hides a box of them somewhere, maybe inside his smile, Easy is something lovely, made of wood and already set ablaze, and Aubrey is drowning somewhere inside himself.

*

_From Ezra Weiss’ biology notes:_

So two of them are less important than the third one, something to do with gills, blah, blah, and blah (Oxford comma, ha!), who cares. Why do octopuses need three hearts, anyway? Greedy little fuckers. Eight arms, too. Just like rich people. They’re too wet to love anyone, so I don’t see why they need so many and this is stupid and I don’t remember that thing about gills and if someone gives me crayons and tells me to draw something, isn’t it only fair for me to ask if I can keep the crayons first?

*

_From Kipp Birdwhistle’s ~~diary~~ JOURNAL:_

3rd November 1998

If a tree falls in a forest, it only makes a sound if the woodcutter’s wife hears it fall, and touches it better even though the tree is leaking resin all over the place. 

I have deaf friends, but I like them anyway.

*

_From Jerusalem Young’s diary:_

7th November 1998

THAT STUPID SLUG-SHITTER. (Easy would be proud, eh?) I’ll ruin him, I’ll ruin him, he won’t get away with this, and dead spiders won’t suffice. I’m thirteen, and I’m ugly, but next year I will be fourteen, and beautiful, and Jonathan Small will fall in love with me, because I’ll make him, and I’ll do to his heart what he did to Aubrey’s nose, provided he has one.

If he doesn’t, I’ll settle for breaking his dick, instead.

If he doesn’t have that, I’ll settle for breaking his face.

Unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno.

*

_From December Graham's husband's mailbox:_

17th November 1998

Dearest Wanker,

No, you may not sell "Young Breton Woman." We have a deal, remember? I'm keeping my end of it.

And pick up the damn phone, you bastard.

Sincerely fuck you,

Ember.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, a disclaimer: I do not write poetry, ever, and whatever it was in this chapter was never meant to be decent. This is me, who's never written a poem, pretending to be a 13-year-old girl writing a poem, and not, you know, me actually writing a poem. It's sort of bad on purpose, which is not to say that I'm capable of writing a good poem on purpose, because I'm not. That said, thank you for reading <333


	10. See him lying on a bed of straw, Christmas, 1998

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a broken heart line, an unsent letter, and a chance meeting on a rainy night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The quote at the beginning of this chapter is attributed to Maya Angelou, but might not actually be hers. Also, apparently the 'if a tree falls in a forest' thing must appear in everything I ever write, I'm sorry. Also, this chapter has one section that's not Aubrey's pov.

René Magritte, _Hegel's Holiday_

*

I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.

~(probably not actually) Maya Angelou

*

“— It’s none of your business where I keep the Monet, sir, now, I kindly ask you to leave the premises—”

“Have you sold it?”

“I will not repeat myself—”

“Do you think it’s ethical, keeping art from people like this?”

“Listen here, I’m more than happy to let whole buses of kids from other schools come here but I’m not going to give someone from a tabloid a tour! Go work at a respectable newspaper, and then we’ll see—”

“Oh, yes, snobbism _is_ part of it, certainly.”

“I have nothing more to say to you—”

“Which is a quote in its own right, I’m sure you’ll agree.”

Kipp dragged Aubrey behind one of the sculptures when they stumbled upon the scene on their way to dinner, late enough that they’d be lucky to make it. They’re not hiding as such, just ‘trying not to draw attention to themselves, Aubrey, _shshsh._ ’ Aubrey almost falls over, refusing to hold on to the sculpture for balance. Kipp is gripping Psyche’s knee, unperturbed by Aubrey’s disapproving stare.

Some feet away, December Graham is flushed, face sharpened by anger, and the reporter is persistent, a sly smile and spittle flying every which way. He’s wearing a tie that looks like a carpet, and he reminds Aubrey of an overgrown mosquito, not enough torso and too much limbs.

It’s not the first one, and it won’t be the last one, but they’re hardly ever this rude.

“I bet you’re keeping it in your bedroom,” he accuses, and December Graham’s hand twitches like she longs to slap him.

“Stay _out_ of whatever I keep in my bedroom,” she hisses, and then Aubrey loses his balance and crashes to the ground.

Kipp slaps a hand over his eyes with a heavy sigh, and the reporter glances at them, surprised. December Graham, who must have known they were there the whole time, doesn’t.

“I’m sure I don’t need to show you out,” she says, innocent. “The door’s right there.”

The reporter’s grin widens.

“What will be next? _The White Duchess_? The Picasso?”

“This might be the middle of nowhere,” December Graham says, examining her nails, “but even the police break the speed limits on empty country roads.”

The man takes it for the threat it is, and turns away, heading for the stairs. When he’s about to walk past, Kipp stretches his leg nonchalantly, and the man trips, yelps, falls.

Just yesterday, Kipp was trying to juggle apples after dinner, reciting sonnets backward, making dirty jokes, and laughing like a ten-year-old, an open sound that carried and caused heads to turn.

“Oops,” he says now with a nasty smile, all fake innocence, his pupils so wide that if Aubrey didn’t know his eye colour, looking at him now, he wouldn’t be able to tell.

It takes the man a while to pick himself off the floor, and once he does, he stares at December Graham, red-faced, like he’s waiting for her to scold Kipp. She raises an eyebrow and tilts her head towards the door.

“I’ll _slaughter_ you in the paper,” the man snaps, and Aubrey remembers his mother laying out wet fillets on old newspaper pages, red stains and a raw smell, wonders if it’ll be the same.

December Graham grins.

As the man trots down the stairs, limping slightly, she crosses her arms and stares at Kipp. She blows a lost tendril of hair off her forehead, and she looks like she’s just robbed a bank, proud and gleeful.

“That was pretty rude.”

“A cramp,” Kipp says with fake innocence and a shrug.

“I say you’ve missed dinner,” December Graham points out in a teasing voice. Kipp smiles like if he licked his fingers, they’d be greasy anyway.

“ _I_ say it was worth it.”

They both grin like, if Aubrey checked, he’d find something under their fingernails.

*

Aubrey’s not taking his suitcase.

It’s only a few weeks after all.

He lays all his clothes out on the bed anyway.

“Are you happy to be going home at last?” Kipp asks, mid-yawn.

Aubrey’s mother, trying to shoot a perfect duck, Aubrey’s father, surrounded by papers, cranberry jam and the wait for maybe-snow, fish eyes and no church.

“Have you seen my tie?” Aubrey asks instead of answering. “The Outhwaite one?”

“The wacky one with the frog and the fairies?”

Aubrey sighs.

“The very one.”

“Not really,” Kipp says, bouncing a tennis ball off the ceiling. He’s been playing with it for the past hour, and has only, or already, hit Aubrey with it three times. “But hey, imagine someone officiating an actual wedding and wearing it all the while! You should become a priest and do that. Or, I don’t know, a sea captain. They can officiate, too, can’t they?”

His pupils are normal now, Kipp’s.

“I need it, Kipp,” Aubrey says, checking, stupidly, the inside of Quickly’s Wellington. “I can’t go home without it.”

“Well, why not stay here with Easy, then? I’m sure he’d be delighted.”

Easy hasn’t been delighted about anything in weeks. He’s been scowling more than usual, but yelling less, always surrounded by heavy library tomes, mumbling things under his nose, The First Defenestration of Prague, echolocation, joie de vivre. When he doesn’t know something in class, he bites the fingers of his right hand, one by one, and then checks it as soon as he can, even if it means a missed meal. He’s more withdrawn, too, observing the others rather than joining in on conversations, unless there’s something he can’t keep himself from opposing, like he's a deflated pufferfish, all spines temporarily hidden. He sits with his back straight, and he combs his hair so often that – even though still fluffy – there’s hardly ever a curl so out of place that Aubrey feels the need to pat it down.

(The last thing is only a half-lie.)

He’s not going home, Easy, since he has no home to go back to. _We’ll have cottage pie_ , December Graham, who’s also staying, promised him. _We’ll have candy, and presents, and a Christmas tree. We’ll ask for snow, and cake, and that my husband dies in a tragic car accident, and we’ll dance, and we’ll sing, and we’ll have good dreams._

Her and all her orphans, and _The Laundress_ , too, another picked up stray.

(“Jesus,” she joked once, “used to hang out with prostitutes, too.)

“Yes, _Easy_ ,” Aubrey says. “Maybe he’s seen the tie.”

He half-runs to Easy’s dormitory, only to find him slumped asleep at his desk, cheek mashed on a book page. Aubrey takes off his shoes in the doorway, because he knows that even though the shaking of an old train won’t wake Easy up, footsteps in a quiet room always will. When he leans over Easy’s shoulder, he can just see a bit of The Song of Songs, _thou art a fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and flowing streams from Lebanon_ , with a note in the margin, ‘Jesus fuck, sounds like someone’s just wet themselves.’

Aubrey shakes his head. Only Easy would scrawl profanities all over a biblical text, and in red pen, too.

Aubrey decides to ask about the tie later and doesn’t fold a blanket over Easy’s shoulders, because he suspects it would wake him up. He does close the ajar window, and waters Easy’s plant, which, after months of their joint effort, still stubbornly refuses to be revived.

*

He doesn’t find the tie in the end, and he hates himself so much for it that he almost does stay at school, only he can’t stand the thought of his mother waiting for him at the train station, blowing on her fingers and smiling through the cold.

*

In September, Quickly was on the train because his parents had been too busy to drive him all the way to school. Jerusalem had begged hers to let her take the train because ‘otherwise everyone will have already made friends by the time I get there, and who will rob— _visit_ graves with me, then?’ and Regina refused to inconvenience her parents in any way and had even sold one of her old dolls to pay for the fare herself.

On the way back, it’s just Aubrey and Regina, and she holds his hand as they wait for the train, not because she wants to, but because he does.

“Your mother won’t remember the tie,” she tells him, her suitcase kept upright between her calves. “You should write Easy a letter from home. I will, and I’ll post him a jumper, too. It’s almost finished, only one sleeve is shorter than the other.”

Aubrey nods but has no intention of sending Easy anything during the holidays. He thinks that Easy would laugh at a letter from him, and only skim it because it wouldn’t be engaging enough.

Actually, he’s already written Easy one, back at Wilgefortis, and he has it in his pocket now, only he’s not going to post it.

Regina rubs her thumb over his palm, frowns. She grabs him by the wrist and brings his hand close to her face to inspect it.

“Your heart line,” she says, surprised. “It’s broken. It’s long, but there’s a gap.”

Aubrey shifts, uneasy.

“You don’t really believe in that stuff, do you?”

“No,” Regina says, shaking her head. “I don’t.”

She takes a needle out of her pocket, still holding on to Aubrey’s hand, and then touches the tip to the start of the heart line, the needle caught between two of her fingers in the middle.

“Does it hurt?”

Aubrey shakes his head, and she moves the needle in a strange way, causing it to skip half an inch with the twitch of her fingers without moving her arm. She repeats the motion, until the needle seems to be skipping along the heart line. One more twitch, and the tip lands in the middle of the break.

“Too far,” she says with a frown. “It needs a bridge.”

“What are you – you say you don’t believe in that stuff but here you are—”

“I _don’t_ ,” she insists. “I just think that the universe has a dark sense of humour.”

Her eyes shift and, for a moment, Aubrey expects her to comment on the bite mark at the base of his thumb, shaped like a gouged eye, but she doesn’t. She pats his hand, pockets the needle, and lets go.

“The train is here,” she announces, bending down to pick up her suitcase before Aubrey can remember to help her with it. Once they’re inside, she brings her knees to her chest, and stares out the window. “everything smells wet.”

“It might snow later,” Aubrey says, rubbing his palms together for warmth. He wonders if his mother will notice the bite mark, and how he'll explain it to her if she will.

“No,” Regina says, tying her hair into a tight knot. “It will rain.”

*

_Dear Easy,_

_I am not posting this letter, so I might as well be honest. I am not writing to you from home, but from the common room, half-hugging the heat radiator. You won’t read this, but I won’t write about how I’m sorry that you have nowhere to go for Christmas anyway, because I’m sure you’d hate me for so much as daring to think it. The truth is, I’m scared of going home because I can’t help but think that my mother will have my father all over her when I get there, that she will have beard burn even though he shaves and doesn’t ever kiss her, that she’ll smell like him even though he’s never close enough to her for the cologne to linger, that her voice will be hoarse from misuse, from having to listen to him so much that she forgot how to talk, even though he doesn’t ever address her with anything other than polite commands._

_Here’s something I know about my mother: she’s a nut, hard on the inside, even harder on the outside._

_Here’s something I know about my father: he’s a nutcracker._

_~~Here’s something I know about myself: I’m a leaf, and we all know what happens to leaves in winter.~~ _

_But there’s another reason why I’m scared of going home. I’m scared of how much you’ll have changed by the time we all get back. How many books will you have read? How many dictionaries? Will you say ‘hello’ in English, or Yiddish, or Latin, or French? Or will you be too busy reading “Dubliners” to bother saying hello?_

_Here’s something I read once: “I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.” I didn’t even catch that ball Jonathan kicked my way, and I’ve never thrown anything in my life, but you, you should. See, it never stops – they’ll throw a hundred things, and you’ll always have only two hands, and even if you learn to juggle, there will still be a crowd laughing at your one-piece clown suit, waiting for you to make a mistake and drop it all._

_Don’t wait until you drop it like I am, Easy. Just start tossing it back._

_Anyway, I was thinking about that thing you wrote in one of your letters months ago, how places are lonely without trees, and I remembered this funny book, “The Lorax.” Imagine a man determined to make money, cutting down tree after tree, until there’s only one left. It falls, maybe it even makes a sound, and there it is: the loneliest world imaginable._

_The thing is, the world has wronged trees. See, according to Newton’s third law of motion, when one body exerts a force on a second body, the second body simultaneously exerts a force equal in magnitude and opposite in direction on the first body. It works like that with fistfights (that’s why you’re not supposed to fold your thumb inside your fist when going for a punch, I assume), but it doesn’t work like that with cutting down forests, does it? A man will bury an axe inside a tree trunk, and, similarly, an axe should be buried in his leg, but it doesn’t ever go that way, does it? Trees bleed, and woodcutters don’t._

_(Actually, that’s not how the third law of motion should work, but it seems like a great injustice anyway.)_

_Thankfully, we have “Macbeth.”_

_The thing is, when someone like Jonathan Small belittles you, by trying to prove him wrong, you’re risking proving him right. Take me: I think I had the chance to have trees, once, but now I’m a desert place and know everything about “The Iliad”, sure. You’re still a forest, Easy, and the whole world is Jonathan Smalls with axes in their hands, but remember Birnam Wood? Sure, it was just branches carried by men, but that’s not what it looked like, right?_

_As far as I’m concerned, Shakespeare is the only one who really understood the third law of motion, and he died long before Newton formed it._

_Do you know about eyelash wishes? How you throw one over your shoulder, and if it’s stuck to your hand, it won’t come true? I don’t make wishes, because I know better, but if I made an exception, I’d use a pine needle instead, and I’d ask that you stay just as you are. Still, if you have to change, rearrange yourself the way you want to, not the way the Jonathans of this world say you should._

_Sincerely,_

_Aubrey._

_P.S. I’ll stare at the trees outside the train windows on my way home, and I’ll think of you._

*

“Oh, but I’ve missed you! Have you grown? Stand up straight! Straighter, yes, oh, just _look_ at you! I kept chestnuts, you know, and I’ll roast them, and everything will smell so alive that we’ll have cheated winter right out of the house!”

Aubrey’s wonderful mother, no beard burn, no cologne stink, voice smooth like a well-oiled door.

“Have you missed me, Aubrey-Baubrey? How much? _This_ much? _More_? On a scale from one to three hundred and twelve? What do you mean, three hundred and eleven? How ungrateful!”

He might be in love with Dora Maar but he loved Shirley Allen first.

*

There’s a boy out in the fields, in Wellingtons that aren’t his, with a tie that’s not his either knotted all wrong at his throat. He snuck out after dark, and has been hoping for snow, but gets rain instead.

He opens his mouth, and drinks it, and laughs.

He doesn’t laugh too often, this boy, and it seems a crime that everyone should miss it, so then maybe it’s a good thing that at least one person doesn’t.

The boy is a mess of lost and found objects, clashing knitwear, a newsboy hat and a dried flower in the knot of the tie that he stole. He twirls around, and water pours down like God is taking a shower, and the boy thinks, good, thinks, high time, yells, YES, YOU STINK, OLD MAN! and wonders if there’s someone up there who hears.

The boy wouldn’t notice the man stood nearby, the darkness thick like marmalade, if it weren’t for the flick of a lighter and the small flame cupped with the palm of the man’s hand.

“Merry Christmas,” the man says when the boy stops mid-spin, arms stretched to the sides as he stares at the flame, “and a Happy New Year.”

“Who the fuck are you?” the boy croaks, glancing back at the building he came from, near but too far away. The rain is so loud that if he screamed, no one would hear, not even God.

Not even the Devil himself.

“Jesus, kids these days,” the man says, voice like a violin that hasn’t been used in years. The boy almost expects him to cough up something sharp. “The mouth on you young people!”

“Are you a rapist or something?” the boy asks, and wonders if this is what happens when you don’t belong to anyone, strange men playing with lighters and thinking you’re up for grabs. Nights like these are when orphans and paintings of blue horses go missing.

“I’m Santa.”

The boy laughs because kids like him aren’t told about Santa until they’re too old to believe things like that.

Kids like him don’t believe things like that, not ever.

The boy brings his finger to his mouth, tests the sharpness of his teeth.

“You’re a leech-eater, is what you are,” he says, and the man laughs. The small flame disappears, and in the dark, the boy can’t even see the whites of the man’s eyes.

“August,” the man whispers and sounds much closer than he should. After that, the boy doesn’t hear footsteps but knows that the man is gone.

“Merry Christmas,” he echoes, “and a Happy New Year.”

He’ll remember, and he’ll expect the man in summer, which is why he’ll miss him in spring.

*

Aubrey tears the letter to shreds and eats the pieces to keep himself from putting it back together and posting it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The boy in wellingtons is, of course, Easy. I'm just pretentious and thought it would work better if I didn't name him. 
> 
> Thank you for reading <333


	11. something borrowed, something new, january 1999

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> nothing blue, nothing old. love at first sight and twenty-two never marked essays on Orwell's Animal Farm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The painting for this chapter is actually perfect and I can't believe I found something so fitting so easily. Actually, Franz Marc is just a m a z i n g and the only reason why I discovered The Tower of Blue Horses is because of Mary Oliver's poetry (which is why she's mentioned in this chapter and will be mentioned many times) which is hfbhbfbkdg because The Tower of Blue Horses has been my obsession for the past three months. 
> 
> Anyway, this chapter is just Alfred the librarian being very gay and very librarian but it is important for the plot which........ by the way, I might make this a series and separate the story into parts, like, for example, a separate part just for all the first year at Wilgefortis chapters, then a separate part for year two and so on... Two reasons for this: this is going to be looong and the thought of having it all as one multi-chapter story kind of stresses me out even if it would be the exact same content posted in the exact same time intervals + it would help me shamelessly write not-plot-related chapters and put them as separate works in the series. Not that everything I write here is plot-relevant because, let's be honest, this mess of a story is all about the characters BUT what if I wanted to write a backstory for somebody's cat or something??? (I don't mean that specifically, obviously, but you know what I mean. I don't want to be super self-indulgent in the main story or distract from it too much so that would be a solution). Would that be okay with you? More confusing? Less confusing? 
> 
> Also, a warning: purple prose incoming

Franz Marc, _Red Foxes_

*

The March hare brings the spring

For you personally.

He is too drunk to deliver it.

He loses it on some hare-brained folly –

Now you will never recover it.

~Ted Hughes, _Deceptions_

*

The café is small, but the coffee is big, cappuccino served in mugs almost too heavy to lift when filled that remind Alfie of home.

Well, home before he got kicked out of it with a snapped-strap leather backpack on his shoulder, hurriedly packed books inside, no clothes.

You can wear it like a handbag, his father told him with a nasty smile and spat at the doorstep like he thought it would keep Alfie from crossing it ever again. _Offended over everything_ , his mother used to say about Alfie. _Delicate sensibilities_. She had no idea that every day after school he would spit on shop windows with his friends so that whoever’s spit stuck the longest instead of dripping down the glass wouldn't have to add to their alcohol money stash that afternoon.

Just then, that one backpack strap hanging loose, Alfie knew that he would never see his friends again.

_You can wear it like a handbag, no? You would, anyway._

He tells himself that he’ll start on the fourth-years’ Orwell papers as soon as he’s finished with the cappuccino. He doesn’t teach but he and December have an agreement: he grades a portion of the English essays every month, and she lets him stick to the library ‘like a hermit’. He’s no good at public speaking, even if the public in question is only twenty well-behaved kids, but he’s good at letting people down gently. He writes encouragements in the margins next to circled errors, always takes the time to decipher illegible handwriting, sometimes with the help of a magnifying glass, and heaps so much praise for everything the kids do right after gently pointing out all they do wrong that they tend to thank him for Fs.

For now, though, he still has half his coffee left, so he sticks to his book and wraps his scarf tighter around his shoulders. It’s January, colder than he remembers it being in years, and even so much as the occasional new customer opening the door to enter is enough to let the cold in. He has a window seat, too. Thankfully, the scarf is big and warm, all soft wool, blue and purple pattern like something from the inside of a snow globe. It’s from a student, too, handmade and offered casually over a Mary Oliver poem, _you don’t want to hear the story/of my life, and anyway/I don’t want to tell it, I want to listen/to the enormous waterfalls of the sun._

It amuses Alfie greatly how all those kids either come to the library together, or one at a time, and, somehow, when it’s the latter, manage to never bump into each other. Aubrey Allen, staring at that Picasso painting like there’s nothing else in the world and perusing dictionaries, letter after letter, word after word, Jerusalem Young asking Alfie about previously expelled students, testing how far she’ll be allowed to go with a smile that would be innocent if it weren’t for how she rocks back and forth on her heels everytime, like she just can’t keep still, Francis Quick always reading about another one of his imaginary illnesses and stubbornly calling it ‘research’, Kipp Birdwhistle asking Alfie strange questions, every fourth or so about December Graham, like a clever sandwich of an investigation, Ezra Weiss checking out more books than he’s allowed at a time, always eyeing Alfie with suspicion like he’s waiting to be put on trial for it when he least expects it, even though he _always_ expects it, and finally Regina Stranger, reading poetry, smelling books, and knitting so much that she has to ask Alfie to pick up more wool in town every two weeks, always sheepish about it, always trying to hand him money in a small satin bag no matter how stubbornly he refuses. He’s not sure how Regina finds the time for all that knitting but her friends all look like they dress in the same quirky, independent boutique, and Alfie’s touched to be included in the count. Once, Regina told him that he’s ‘quiet in a patient way,’ and he thought that everything that had happened to him must have been worth it if it got him to where he was then, a job he liked and all those kids who would grow up happier than him, or else.

The ‘or else’ is something he’s brave enough to think at God, even if he’s never quite brave enough to say it to people’s faces. Sometimes, he thinks he’s not quite done with his own growing up just yet, which, at thirty-one, might be pathetic, but always makes him smile anyway. December called him a fool when he told her about it once, but smiled, too, like she loved him for it, _listen, I might be going grey, but what if I’m going happy, too?_

“ _The Waves_?” someone says and the legs of the empty chair opposite to Alfie's screech on the floor. “How pretentious.”

Alfie doesn’t like that word, pretentious. Another week, and he’d be caught reading one of those bodice-rippers with a shirtless man and a woman with wind-blown hair on the cover, a lighthouse and a saturated sunset for a background. Another week, and he’d be caught reading _A Little Princess._ He reads what he enjoys, and sometimes what he enjoys is Marcel Proust, but sometimes it’s good old Frances Hodgson Burnett, and he doesn’t care if something’s critically acclaimed, he only cares if it makes him reread sentences twice just because he wants to.

“I find that value is never objective,” he says before getting a good look at his unexpected companion, and it occurs to him that the man, whoever he is, doesn't have the benefit of having been following Alfie’s thought process to get to where Alfie is. Alfie does that a lot, forgetting that conversations are here, now, aloud, and not inside his head.

And yet, the man smiles, and what a smile, too.

A Picasso man, everything about him jagged and fragmentary, face like a deck of cards shuffled wrong, all scars, one corner of his lips higher up than the other. Even one of the man’s eyelids looks like it was cut in half, the skin regrown strange almost to the eyelashes. Shaggy hair, short but everywhere, and the brown of drying blood, catching scarlet where sunlight dares touch it, and eyes the colour of puddles Alfie slept next to his first week without home.

He looks like puzzle pieces hurriedly forced together, not to form a picture but to fill the gaps never mind how.

“Is it the same for art, then?” the man asks, unfazed, that one corner of his mouth lifted higher still so that the smile is even more disturbing. Alfie thinks that December would like him instantly, for all the irregularities.

(Months later, he will remember thinking that and he’ll throw a book for the first and for the last time in his life.)

“Literature _is_ art,” Alfie says, putting the book away to show that the man has his full attention, and gets a good look at him.

It’s the colours that scare him the most. Alfie himself is all weathered shades, the kind that never make you look twice, unless you’re observant and do catch it, how something’s off, how his hair is a washed-out brown only because it doesn’t make sense for it to be grey, how his eyes are, too, but only if you don’t pay attention, how his skin seems pale until you realize it looks dead instead. People hardly ever notice but December did, right away, _why, but you look like you’ve escaped from a black and white film._ She said that he was the colours of mice found dead on sunless days, and once, he got drunk and confessed to her that, sometimes, he believed he’d shed colours the farther he got from home one shade at a time, like losing layers of skin.

_Maybe you’d find them if you retraced my footsteps, colourful boy shapes in roadside ditches, only no one ever will, no one ever would._

She kissed his forehead, told him she liked him just the way he was, and bought him obnoxious jumpers.

Now, Alfie wonders if the man can see all the grey, when he’s all fire and rust himself, like day bleeding out with night’s knife buried deep in its belly.

For a moment, Alfie wants to plead with the man to go away, before someone notices the contrast and starts screaming, thinking Alfie dead next to all the man’s alive.

“Literature is literature, and art is art, and art shouldn’t mean as much as it does, because it doesn’t,” the man says, and Alfie can’t decide if it’s all nonsense or not.

“Not that it matters to me,” the man adds with a grin. He leans closer over the table, and he even smells like blood, or metal, or both, maybe like taking a blade to a throat.

Don’t talk to strangers, Alfie’s mother told him a forever ago, but for years now, she’s been a stranger herself.

The man helps himself to Alfie’s coffee like they’ve known each other for years, throat working around it like he’ll never be dead, and Alfie feels cold somewhere too deep inside to rub warm, like he has frost inside his bones rather than marrow. He thinks that the man’s hands must be hot, and gets a good look at them, tanned skin and white scar tissue all over in patternless patterns that make him remember trying to scratch himself out of his body once, fifteen and dad will hate me and enough of this enough of myself.

He’s never learned it in all those years of shedding colours, how to scratch himself from the inside so that he’d open along some hidden stitch and spill like stuffing, leave himself behind like an easily-brushed-off mistake.

(The man is summer stumbling into autumn, and Alfie is what happens to autumn after all the leaves have fallen and rotten on the ground.)

The table is small, and the man’s shoes bump into Alfie’s under it, and Alfie doesn’t know what’s going on -- all he knows is that the man smells like wounds and wounds are alive and warm.

Alive and warm until they aren’t.

Alive and warm until they heal.

Until they heal or kill you.

It’s instant, like a fever.

“Art doesn’t matter?” he echoes, and remembers his mother telling him that he had a terrible taste in girls, only the joke’s on her, because his taste in boys was never much better, and her own taste in men wasn’t either.

“Not to me, no,” the man says, and his voice sounds like a tool put away for too long, the blade gone dull. He reaches for the copy of _The Waves_ and flips through it a few times, arching his eyebrow every now and then or smiling, amused, probably a reaction to the notes on the margins. Alfie slides low in his chair and wishes this was already over, or wasn’t, doesn’t know which.

“How do you know I’m not waiting for someone?” he asks, trying for offended.

“You don’t look like the sort,” the man says, absent-minded.

“What sort? The waiting sort?”

“The sort to be joined by people.”

“ _Rude_.”

“If you say so. Oh, really, now, you had to underline it _twice_? _Let us again pretend that life is a solid substance, shaped like a globe, which we turn about in our fingers. Let us pretend that we can make out a plain and logical story, so that when one matter is despatched—love for instance—we go on, in an orderly manner, to the next –_ oh, Jesus, it _is_ pretentious, no matter how you look at it. I might throw up.”

Alfie tugs the mug of coffee back to his side of the table just in case, and the man watches and laughs. This, too, sounds like a dull blade, but one about to break skin anyway.

Alfie’s been in love fifty-seven times because he falls in love the way most people decide whether they like a painting – right away. December and her husband were number thirty-four. He counts them together because that’s how he met them, too long shadows, sunset like a sore in the world’s mouth, and two hands to shake, one rough, one smooth.

It was December’s hand that was rough, all chapped knuckles and scars on the inside of her palm. Malcolm’s was like marble, smooth and cold. A few months later, Alfie noticed the bruises and decided to never love Malcolm Graham again. He still loved December, but it was brotherly rather than romantic at that point, like he would kill for her but wouldn’t die for her.

“Sorry, who are you again?” Alfie says now, because it’s been a while, and he’s not happy to have hit fifty-eight. He can see it all over the man, that he’s a very stupid mistake, that even if Alfie gets up and leaves now, somehow, it’ll be too late anyway, somehow, he’ll have already made it.

The man smiles like he knows, and it’s really two mismatched smiles, a scar cutting his lips in two.

“I’m Bored-Out-of-My-Mind,” the man says. “Entertain me?”

“Can’t,” Alfie says, half against himself. “I’m Too-Busy-to-Entertain.”

“No,” the man says simply. “You’re Alfred.”

Alfie stares.

“There’s a note on the first page, from whoever gave this to you,” the man explains, arching an eyebrow. “Or does ‘Alfie’ stand for Alphonse?”

“ _Busy_ ,” Alfie repeats stubbornly.

“Oh, this one’s something! _I begin to feel the wish to be singled out; to be summoned, to be called away by one person who comes to find me, who is attracted towards me, who cannot keep himself from me, but comes to where I sit on my gilt chair—_ ”

“I didn’t underline that one,” Alfie says, tugging at the book, hoping the man will give it up, but no luck. “People are staring.”

“Oh, but it’s not the declamation,” the man says, pointing a finger at himself. “It’s the face kirigami.”

“Kirigami is usually symmetrical,” Alfie says dryly, and the man tilts his head, curious, and then bursts out laughing like an axe to the neck.

“Oh, you’re actually something!”

“Listen, just tell me what you want with me—”

“Hey, hey, easy,” the man says, leans back, brings up a hand. “See, I’m the person who joins you so that you can be the kind of person people join, how’s that sound?”

Alfie stares, sighs, f

a

l

l

s

.

“And a name, please?”

The man hums with an amused smile, taps his chin thoughtfully with his finger, and then he cocks his head like something’s just occurred to him.

“Name’s Dante,” he says at last with a wolfish grin.

“Alighieri,” Alfie says stupidly before he can bite his tongue.

“Ah, I would never waste that much time on describing hell but at least I’ve been there,” the man says with a lazy wave of his hand. “Hey, you have a bit of foam there – here.”

He leans over the table, jostling it, and licks the imaginary foam off the corner of Alfie’s mouth.

“See you later,” he says and leaves, the bell above the door jingling merrily, the smell of old/new blood still in the air.

It takes Alfie three minutes of staring at nothing to realize that the man took his copy of _The Waves_ with him, and when he does, it occurs to him that whatever it is that hasn’t even started yet can’t possibly end well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, look, I know that the 'falls' thing was pretentious and stupid but I've been reading too much Jonathan Safran Foer and he does all those crazy things with sentences and this is my idea of being cool which is why it's a miracle I wasn't bullied in school. I'm sorry :,) 
> 
> Also, you can ignore me now, because I'm going to be boring but... at first I thought having Alfie read A Little Princess was too unrealistic, but that's why I decided to leave it. This story is not meant to be realistic after all (*researches newsboy caps for two hours but still doesn't get how boarding schools in the uk work*) and I hate that a boy reading books about girls is unrealistic in the first place. When I was a kid I read books about boys! Not that it's a good thing (or a bad thing) but, like, does it ever work the other way around? The other day I asked my brother to name one book/movie with a female main character that is one of his favorites and he couldn't. I almost cried. I don't mean that everyone has to read books about girls because no. But I wish it was a bit more balanced if you know what I mean. Why I'm boring you with this? Blame it on the quarantine, I guess. Blame everything on quarantine. 
> 
> Bet you didn't expect me to make Alfie an important character though. What can I say? Librarians might not rule the world just yet but they sure rule my heart :,) 
> 
> Okay, I'll shut up now since the notes are getting longer than the actual chapter, oops.


	12. the Chagall fiasco, february 1999

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Puberty sucks, a Chagall is bought, and lakes in winter are too cold for a swim.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter wasn't supposed to exist and I'm so glad that it does because it has many interactions that will be very important later. Also, Easy is very morally ambiguous here. Actually, everyone besides Regina and Quickly is morally ambiguous. 
> 
> (Also, funny story, there's a scene in this chapter that inspired me to follow the tangled thread of character development n years onwards and so I wrote a future chapter for this story which I won't post for a long, long time that involves someone getting blindfolded. For once in my fanfic-writing-"career" it's not because someone gets kidnapped either.)
> 
> And a mild warning: this has a minor injury described in a fairly explicit manner? I guess? It's just a cut though, nothing serious, a bit gross.

Joanna Śmielowska, _White (Ophelia)_

*

How lush the world is,

how full of things that don’t belong to me–

~Louise Glück, _Parousia_

*

You could say that it starts with Chagall and ends with Chagall, but it really starts with Regina.

It’s maths, and she’s called to the board, hair tied with one black ribbon, the collar of her shirt rumpled where she’d scratched her neck, and a red stain on the back of her uniform skirt.

Lavinia laughs first, and so maybe it starts with her instead.

The tip of Kipp’s pencil breaks on paper, and Easy crumples the page he’s been scrawling notes on into a ball. People are noticing, Lavinia is pointing her finger, boys are laughing, girls are, too, and then Jerusalem reaches back, grabs Aubrey’s copy of Shakespeare’s sonnets, and throws it.

A window breaks, someone yells, and then it’s all chaos.

“Jesus Christ motherfucking _fuck_ ,” Quickly says two desks away, and it’s so unexpected from him that Aubrey laughs, even though nothing about this is funny. “Jerry, did you really just—”

Kipp slaps a hand over his mouth.

“No one saw it was her,” he hisses, and Jerusalem uses the commotion to stride to the front of the classroom and drags a confused-looking Regina out of the classroom.

“Lavinia did,” Aubrey says because Lavinia is staring at the broken window with a mean smile, no doubt already planning to snitch on them. “I need to go get the book.”

The teacher is pulling kids from their desks, away from the window, and Aubrey sneaks out without a backward glance and hurries down the corridor. He’s about to break into a run when he hears water splashing in the girls’ bathroom.

He slows down, comes to a stop, remembers the newsboy cap stuffed inside his schoolbag.

It was Jerusalem who picked it for him, a wicked Musketeer smile.

He imagines Shakespeare’s sonnets down in the grass, surrounded by shards of glass and incriminating.

He remembers how, just a few days ago, Regina handed him a pair of woollen socks, _ars gratia artis_ carefully stitched under the hem in slanted letters.

He pushes the door open.

Inside, Regina is sitting on the windowsill, skirt off and jumper pulled as low as it’ll go. She’s swinging her legs and watching Jerusalem, who’s rinsing her skirt in the sink and swearing quietly about how she’ll make a skewer from Lavinia. They both look up when Aubrey steps inside, and he feels stupid, adjusts his tie.

“I can leave,” he offers and hates how strangled he sounds.

Regina gives him a tired smile. “Don’t be stupid.”

He watches Jerusalem scrub at the stain and desperately tries to think of something to say. “I’m sorry,” he chokes out in the end.

Jerusalem’s hands go still. She gives him a look and shakes her head. “For what? Being a boy? Apology accepted.”

“You should go get the book, Aubrey,” Regina advises, staring at her open hands. “And I can wash that, Sally. I’d be grateful if you got me a change of clothes?”

Aubrey raises his eyebrows at the ‘Sally’ but doesn’t ask. Jerusalem drops the skirt and dries her hands with the hem of her own.

“ _Yes_ ”, she says. “I’m sorry.”

They leave together and only manage to walk a few steps before Jerusalem doubles over and starts laughing.

“I can’t believe I threw your book out the window as a diversion!” she screeches, clutching her stomach. Aubrey can’t help it – he laughs too.

“I can’t believe it, either. _Christ._ ”

“Aubrey,” she says, still laughing, only when she catches him by the arm, the laughter sounds more like crying. “ _Aubrey_ ,” she repeats, a small, broken sound, and he looks away because he can’t stand to see her eyes – that open invitation to mischief, that wink of something hellish reflected in the pupils – go wet.

“Jerusalem,” he mumbles, wishing he knew what to do.

“What if they expel me?” she sniffs, and it kind of breaks him. “I never had friends before, you know.”

He glances at where she’s still clutching his arm and notes the lack of white half-moons on her nails. Malnutrition, he knows that much, only how, when she’s such a strong little thing?

“I didn’t, either.”

He gets that right, at least, because she laughs.

“I suspected as much,” she teases. “Did they bully you horribly at your old school?”

He lets himself remember it for a moment, being forced to swallow dirty coins, being wrestled into grass, washing the stains out in the attic bathroom later, and waiting ages for his clothes to dry so his mother wouldn’t know when he got home.

Staring at a toilet seat with somebody’s hand on the back of his neck.

He would recite poems in his head whenever it happened, and so, it often feels like it never did.

“Only a little bit,” he says, holding up his hand and forming an open circle with his thumb and index finger, an inch of space between their tips.

“When you get angry, do you just gulp it down?” Jerusalem asks, wiping her eyes with her sleeve, rough, no coddling, not even when it’s herself.

“I don’t get angry.”

She looks at him like she feels sorry for him.

“December Graham won’t let them expel you,” he promises.

“How come?”

“You’re a lot like her, you know,” Aubrey tells her and manages a smile. “She wouldn’t expel herself, either.”

Jerusalem returns the smile and then salutes. They split up, and he listens to the click of her shoes and hopes he’s right.

When he retrieves the book, it’s open, spine bent.

_The worst was this: my love was my decay._

He hates Shakespeare just then.

*

December Graham talks to them about Chagall two weeks before Jerusalem breaks the window, a poor boy from a Russian shtetl with too delicate hands, not wanting to forget the stars, poor in Paris and painting over his older works when he couldn’t afford new canvases, longing to create so much that he’d destroy for it.

She romanticizes him away, hands flying as she describes _La Joie au Cirque_ to them, and Easy hates him on principle at first.

“What, am I supposed to like him just because he was Jewish too? Sod off.”

He scowls whenever someone mentions the artist and Jerusalem, who loves goading him, mentions him all the time.

And then:

“I think I like him after all,” whispered into Aubrey’s sleeve.

It happens like this:

Aubrey is holed up between two library bookcases when Easy finds him, reading a book on Gaugain and wondering if the letters look like wriggling ants because he’s tired or because he needs glasses.

“There you are,” Easy says and then plops down on the ground next to Aubrey, back to one bookcase and feet propped on the opposite one, legs stretched. “Something terrible happened.”

“What did you do?” Aubrey asks, already dreading the answer.

“I didn’t do anything! How _rude_!”

“Then?”

Easy sighs, irritated, and grabs Aubrey’s forearm. Aubrey feels it through the sleeve of his shirt and lets Easy move his arm like he’s one of those human figure models made of wood that you can align into whatever position you want.

(He would let other people do this, too.)

(He wouldn’t like it if other people did it.)

Easy is holding his forearm with both hands now and drags it close to his face, so that it covers his eyes.

“Don’t look at me,” he instructs, his breath warm through the cotton of Aubrey’s sleeve.

“Alright,” Aubrey agrees simply and waits, his own breath like the tick-tock of a watch. Sometimes, Easy is so much like a wild animal that it scares him.

“I think I like him after all,” Easy says quietly, and Aubrey feels the strain in his arm, lets it become dead weight in Easy’s hands.

“What?”

“I said I like him after all,” Easy repeats. He sounds crushed. “Chagall.”

“Ah,” Aubrey sighs. When he glances at Easy, Easy’s eyes still covered. “Is that a bad thing?”

Easy sighs, lets go. Aubrey keeps his arm there until Easy shoves it away. He moves his own arm this time, presses it over Aubrey’s eyes.

“Oh?”

“Shut _up_.”

“Shutting up now.”

“I can't ever have anything,” Easy says, frustrated, “and so it’s better not to want anything in the first place.”

The quiet that follows feels like one of those tests where you only get two lines of space for your answer and good luck getting it right.

“I understand.”

“No, you _don’t_ ,” Easy snaps, and his forearm shakes against Aubrey’s face. Aubrey reaches up slowly, wraps his hands around it to hold it up.

“I don’t, then,” he agrees easily. “There’s the Monet.”

Still over Easy’s bed, _Open Sea_ , no matter how much grief Jonathan Small gives him about it, December Graham playing favourites again, is she, my my.

"Yes," Easy says, only, somehow, it sounds like a no. “There’s the Monet.”

“What do you want me to say?” Aubrey sighs to break another uneasy silence. He wants to give Easy something but he doesn’t have anything to give besides Latin proverbs that don’t mean a thing and feelings that are too confusing for him to know words for.

“You have to tell me if it’s alright to like him,” Easy says. “You _have_ to.”

Aubrey wonders if it’d be cruel if he insisted that he doesn’t want this.

“Why?”

“You forced me to trust you, didn’t you? So now I do, for better or for worse.”

Aubrey remembers it, making promises inside October’s palm, how he gave Easy Dora Maar even though she wasn’t his to give, all to convince Easy that he wouldn’t fall.

“And this is your revenge, then?”

The yes, when Easy says it, is almost violent.

“Like him to death, then,” Aubrey says, tilting his head back against the bookcase, at once hating and loving how Easy’s arm follows like they share a vein there. “You can love art without having it. You can love it without having to lose it.”

“Do you promise?” Easy says doubtfully.

“No,” Aubrey admits, “but I’m hopeful. Is that good enough?”

Easy snorts. “No,” he says and tries to jerk his arm away so gently that Aubrey allows himself to pretend that he hasn’t felt it for half a second and holds on. Easy moves his arm again, and Aubrey nods, lets go. “Maybe I’m hopeful, too, and so what?”

Aubrey smiles but the _so what?_ hangs in the air between them like an invitation for something cruel to come and toy with them, poke the question mark of it and answer. 

*

After Lavinia snitches on them, Easy collects slugs outside, only dead ones. He puts them in Quickly’s lunchbox, and Aubrey knows that, later, Quickly will throw the box away instead of washing it.

“I wouldn’t wish her on live ones,” Easy explains when Kipp asks why he's only collecting dead snails. He adjusts Easy’s coat for him, and Aubrey doesn’t count the holes in it because it makes him feel strangely queasy, just how many there are.

Aubrey doesn’t think Easy will appreciate it but he says it anyway. “'Burn not your house to fright the mouse away’.”

Easy gives him an unimpressed look and shivers. Aubrey still refuses to count the holes, but damn the wind for having curious fingers.

(He’d offer Easy his own coat but knows that Easy is too proud to take it and that he himself is too pathetic to stand having it rejected.)

“What an awful mouse, though,” Kipp says with a crooked smile.

In the morning, Lavinia will wake to slugs laid out all over her bedsheets.

*

Lavinia steals Easy’s journal one week before Jerusalem breaks the window.

‘Journal’ is generous. It’s really pages ripped out of different notebooks and tied together with an old shoelace, the paper mismatched, white, yellow, and blue.

Easy drifts off in the common room armchair, and wakes when he hears the footsteps, but he’s not fast enough. Lavinia holds it over his head and reads out bits, laughs at the sketches.

“Chagall, huh?” she asks, delighted. “Oh, his ‘use of blue and green’ is your favourite? How _precious_ —”

By the time Aubrey calmly pries the journal out of Lavinia's hands, the damage has already been done. Easy is staring at her, too-big jumper sliding off his shoulder and his eyes red-rimmed from sleep, too honest for something this public. When Aubrey returns the papers to him, that shoelace they’re tied together with is coming undone.

*

December Graham argues with Richard Longborn, and he might be the headmaster, but, in the end, she’s the one funding the school, and it seems to be a trump card sort of thing. She takes Jerusalem’s side because ‘you had good intentions, dear’ and she makes such a strong case for her that breaking a window suddenly sounds noble.

“They would learn it was Jerusalem sooner or later anyway,” Aubrey says when everyone else has left the table after dinner. It’s just him, Easy, and two plates drowning in gravy. “You didn’t do it because Lavinia went to Longborn at all, did you?”

Lavinia, yelling like an exorcism gone wrong, two slugs crushed under her when she rolled over in the morning. There’s some cruelty to it that scares Aubrey, how no matter how much he insists he despises them all, Easy loves Regina enough to hate someone else that much.

“It wasn’t revenge for snitching,” Aubrey continues when Easy doesn’t say anything and only draws patterns in the pool of sauce on his plate with his fork like he's bored. “It was revenge for how she dared laugh at Regina.”

Easy stares at Aubrey, unimpressed, chin cradled lazily in his hand.

“It was just for daring to laugh,” Aubrey repeats, shaking his head.

“No ‘just’,” Easy snaps, straightening in his chair. For a second, Easy's eyebrows two angry lines and his lips stretched in a nasty smile, Aubrey imagines some strange future in which they’d both go into law and keep getting the same cases, Aubrey for defense, Easy for prosecution, almost laughs at how he would never win.

“And get off your high horse, anyway,” Easy says. “You could have stopped me, and yet you did nothing.”

Aubrey doesn’t argue, because it’s true. He watched, he worried, he disapproved, and he lay awake in his bed when Kipp sneaked out to keep watch for Easy in the girls’ dormitory, but he didn’t try and stop them, not once. He didn’t think they’d listen, because who was he to— who was he?

(And a small part of him – the same part of him that had laughed when he'd told Jerusalem that he never got angry – liked the idea of Lavinia waking up to slugs, thought, _serves you right_. Just one small, nasty capillary of ugly sentiments, pulsing too fast, the way it would after a run.)

“Alright,” Aubrey says, longing to still Easy’s wrist when the pattern drawn in his gravy turns out to be a knife. “Alright.”

*

A week after Jerusalem breaks the window, a book on Chagall disappears from the library, the gap on the shelf like a knocked-out tooth. Easy puts his hand there like he doesn’t understand and, after that, they both pretend it doesn’t mean anything.

*

“Look, look!” Lavinia calls out two weeks after Jerusalem breaks the window. “ _Look_!”

It’s meant to be a show, but her older friends don’t seem impressed, watching her from the end of the corridor with bored expressions. Aubrey’s seen Lavinia trailing behind them like a young duckling trying to keep up, and has seen them brush her off and crowd into one of the attic bathrooms to smoke cigarettes they’d stolen from their fathers over Christmas many a time.

“I’m looking,” Easy says, and he’s being brave, trying to sound bored, but his eyes are those of a bird that knows it’ll be shot, and Aubrey would know.

Regina puts her hand on his shoulder, and she’s been brave, too. Lavinia’s managed to get the rumour circulating and sometimes people whisper, huddled close, whenever Regina walks past, but she never speeds up, never lets her hair cover her face, ties it into a knot and stares straight ahead like an equilibrist that doesn’t care that people are tossing tomatoes her way, intent on making it to the other side of the rope.

The book Lavinia’s holding in her hands is the library copy about Chagall, and Aubrey thinks that if he put his finger to Easy’s pulse now, it would feel like teeth.

“I can’t believe how _lucky_ I am, can you?” Lavinia goes on, chitter-chatter, drawing a crowd. “When I asked Father, I didn’t think anything would come of it, but he called me today to let me know that he’d bought one _just for me_ , a Chagall, worth _millions_ , an early birthday gift.”

Regina’s grip on Easy’s shoulder doesn’t tighten but she leans closer to him to whisper something in his ear. Easy tilts his head her way like he’s listening, but his eyes are blown-out candles, like he’s stuck somewhere inside himself, ripping an imaginary world to shreds.

“ _Very_ early,” Lavinia adds with a satisfied smile. “My birthday is in May.”

“Can I go now?” Easy says through his teeth, and Regina smiles at him, a small, proud thing.

“Don’t you want to have a look at it first? Not the original copy, of course, not yet, but there’s a picture of it here,” Lavinia blabbers sweetly, turning the pages of the book unbearably slow. “Oh! It’s this one, _Bouquet by the Window_ ,” she says, turning the book their way. She stops smiling, sudden like turning the light off. “Don’t you just love it, Ezra? All that blue. All that _green_.”

Regina is fast, wrapping her arms around Easy and forcing him still as soon as he lunges forward, trying to drag him backward and ignoring it when he jerks so hard that he kicks her in the shin.

Lavinia’s smile comes back and Aubrey sighs. At least she’ll have to return the book to the library before the end of the month.

Later, he feels too guilty to try and search for Easy, but too guilty not to. He finds him, predictably, or maybe unexpectedly, between those same two bookcases where Easy asked him to let him love Chagall. He’s stretched on the ground, limbs spread like some medieval torture, and Aubrey stops with the tip of his shoe half an inch away from the sole of Easy’s own.

“You can love art without having it,” he says again, and it’s pretty pathetic, as apologies go.

“Not if others have it,” Easy says. “Not when it’s like this.”

“It’s only one painting.”

“I can’t tell if I just don’t want _her_ to have it, or if I want to have it myself.”

"Oh?"

“I can’t want anything,” Easy says, and then slaps his hand over his mouth. He doesn’t say anything else but Aubrey guesses it anyway, how he can’t want anything, but wants everything, and then some.

*

Aubrey talks to Treasure Little because he can’t stand talking to anyone else. They’re sitting under a tree in their winter coats, no snow. January was mercilessly cold, but now it’s all lukewarm weather again, the sky grey like an old rag and too much sweat when you wear a scarf but a cough when you don’t.

“It was so scary when she started screaming,” Treasure tells him, practicing knots on his shoelaces. She says it helps her focus when her thoughts are too much. “I thought someone was being murdered.”

They share a dormitory, her and Lavinia, and Aubrey wonders if Lavinia bullies Treasure, too, for being her polar opposite and daring to be sweet.

“I felt bad for the slugs.”

“Not for Lavinia?” Aubrey prompts as Treasure frowns at a knot she can’t get undone.

“Most people would say she had it coming,” she says and hisses when she breaks a nail. “I might have ruined that shoelace.”

Aubrey smiles. “You’re not most people, are you?”

“I think her parents are awful, you know,” Treasure confesses. “Lavinia’s.”

“So she’s the way she is because of her parents?”

Treasure stares at the knot, tries again, gets it undone at last.

“No,” she says simply, climbing to her feet and dusting off her skirt. “I like to think that if our parents explained us, I wouldn't make any sense."

She doesn’t elaborate, and Aubrey doesn’t ask.

*

Jerusalem bursts into their room and starts throwing their coats at them. She tosses a shoe, too, and it hits Aubrey on the forehead, leaving a smear of dirt and a promise of a bruise behind.

“Hurry up, hurry up,” she says, clapping her hands, and won’t explain. She drags them out of the dormitory and runs down the corridor, collecting already dressed Regina and Easy on the way.

“What’s going on?” Aubrey asks when Jerusalem tugs at the end of his scarf to get him to hurry up. He adjusts the newsboy cap on his head and tries not to trip as she drags him down the stairs.

“I was outside and saw Lavinia acting all suspicious,” Jerusalem explains, pushing the front door open. “She went into the trees and climbed over the wall. I think she’s going to the lake.”

It’s early evening and it's already dark outside. Aubrey wants to remind Jerusalem that in the winter months they’re only allowed outside till six p.m. but he can’t catch his breath. Jerusalem stops to wait for the others to catch up, hands on hips, and taps her foot impatiently when they do.

It’s waxing gibbous, and Aubrey once got his trousers stolen from the changing room at his old school for knowing the name. The moon looks like a kicked ball starting to deflate, and there’s just enough light to see by. Around them, the fields seem to stretch farther than during the day, and Aubrey hates how open they are, how, if the moon was an eye, they’d be in plain sight, with nowhere to hide.

“Now what?” Easy says, and it’s too dark to see those holes in his coat, but Aubrey thinks about them anyway.

“Now we find her,” Jerusalem says like it should be obvious, rocking on her heels.

Aubrey sighs. “Haven’t we had enough of Lavinia?”

“She’s up to something,” Jerusalem says, rounding him to push at his back. “Move, move.”

“ _We_ ’re up to something.”

He follows them anyway.

The lake is at the back of the school and over the wall. A small shed hugs it there from the inside, which makes climbing over it easier. On the other side, the wall is not as tall either, built into the side of a slope.

“I don’t like this,” Quickly says, hugging himself. “We have to be back in an hour.”

“More walking, less talking,” Jerusalem says, rushing towards the wall.

Aubrey pats his newsboy cap flat and almost regrets buying it. They all follow Jerusalem and, five minutes later, they’re climbing the shed one by one, skinned knees, hushed laughter, and warm breath.

It’s a mile-long walk to the lake, half of it through an open field, and half through clusters of trees. When they get close enough that Aubrey can smell the water and see the moon reflected in it in blots, Jerusalem signals for them to stop. They step around the last of the trees and hide behind a bush, too many twigs and suspicious sounds coming from all directions.

“Bingo,” Kipp whispers when they first hear voices, and Quickly groans, trying to comb a spiderweb out of his hair, bravely keeping himself from screaming in terror. Aubrey reaches out to help him and the leaves rustle so loud that Jerusalem sends them a murderous look, but the silhouettes of girls standing on the half-rotten bridge some twenty feet away don’t turn their way.

“What the hell are they doing?” Jerusalem says, squinting at them. One of the girls, the smallest one, starts pulling her clothes off, asking if it’s really necessary, and does it have to be this way? She takes off her glasses, too, and that's how Aubrey knows it’s Lavinia. The other girls assure her that it is, in fact, necessary, a rite of passage, if you will, we had to do it when we were your age, too, I know it’s cold but we have a towel, see, and we’ll keep your clothes safe, so no more talking and hop in.

“I don’t like this,” Quickly says, forgetting to whisper. “The water must be _freezing_."

Lavinia strips to her underwear, faces the water, and walks up to the very edge of the bridge.

“Go on!” one of the girls yells, cradling Lavinia's clothes in her arms. “We don’t have the whole day!”

When Lavinia jumps, the splash is loud like a gunshot, and Aubrey can’t believe that someone might want to belong this bad. When the girls start giggling and run away with Lavinia’s clothes, he remembers how his mother was scared that the same thing would happen to him.

He knows that, once Lavinia gets back to school, people will see her like this, wet, in her underwear, blue-cold. He doesn’t want to look.

“We should do something,” he says and, next to him, Jerusalem grins.

“I agree!” she says. Aubrey doubts they have the same thing in mind. They all rush to the bridge and by the time Lavinia coughs herself quiet and struggles out of the lake, they’re already huddled there, waiting. She stares at them and seems to understand right away, chin trembling but held high.

Easy pushes his way past Jerusalem and Kipp and stops a foot away from her.

“Hi,” he says and Aubrey wonders if Lavinia still thinks that the Chagall was worth it, or wishes she had asked his father for a pony instead. “A bit cold for a swim.”

“I hate you,” she spits, and Easy lets his hand hover an inch from her bare stomach.

“Don’t move or I’ll push you back in.”

“I _hate_ you,” she repeats. Easy only nods.

“Apologize to Regina,” he tells her. Next to Aubrey, Regina makes a strangled noise.

“I don’t need her to, Easy,” she says. “I don’t care, alright? I promise.”

“ _Apologize_ ,” Easy repeats, and Lavinia doesn’t tell him that she hates him again. Instead, she stares at Regina over his shoulder with an unreadable expression.

“I’m sorry, Bloody Mary,” she says eventually, and Aubrey closes his eyes, convinced that Easy will push her. He only dares open them when there's no splash.

“Use her name,” Easy instructs calmly, and Aubrey almost asks him to cut it out, Lavinia’s skin all goosebumps.

“I’m sorry, Regina,” Lavinia says, staring at her feet, curling her toes. Easy nods, takes his hand back, and takes off his coat. He holds it out to her with both hands, like an offering, and Lavinia shakes, stares at it, frowns.

Aubrey has this thought that if she says one word about the state of the coat, Jerusalem will learn that he lied about never getting angry, but Lavinia accepts it without complaint, hurriedly pulling it on. It takes three tries for her to get her left arm in the sleeve, and her fingers shake so bad – from shock, or cold – that, after a minute of watching her struggle, Regina walks up to her, gently bats her hands away, and buttons the coat up for her.

“My mother almost did call me Mary, you know,” she tells Lavinia with a small smile. “The nickname would have been funnier if she had.”

Easy doesn’t stop at the coat. He kicks off his shoes and strips off his trousers, too, and stands there, skinny-legged, in boxer shorts that look like hand-me-downs, a bit loose on him and almost threadbare.

“Are those _my_ socks?” Quickly demands, scandalized, and Easy scowls at him, wriggling his toes. They _are_ Quickly’s socks, black with small yellow dots all over but, personally, Aubrey thinks it's not the time to be yelling about it.

When Lavinia’s done pulling on the trousers and tying Easy’s shoes, Easy hands her the mustard-yellow scarf Regina made him months before too.

“For your hair,” he explains.

Lavinia stares at him like he belongs in a mental asylum, but wraps the scarf around her hair without a word. Easy smiles, satisfied, and turns on his heel to stride towards the forest. For a moment, they all stare after him in silence, and then Lavinia sighs and follows, shoes loud on the wooden planks. Aubrey hurries after Easy himself and catches up with him near the trees, where Easy’s struggling not to step on branches.

“If I offer you my coat, will you put it on?”

“No,” Easy says simply. “I’m used to being cold.”

It feels like a slap.

“I could probably carry you all the way to the wall.”

“Stop being patronizing.”

Aubrey opens his mouth to argue but thinks better of it. He walks next to Easy in silence, ready to reach out and steady him should he trip, only, somehow, Easy never does. By the time they get to the wall, they have ten minutes to get back to school, and they all hurriedly hoist each other up. Aubrey is the last, and the others half-drag him to the top of the wall so enthusiastically that he almost rolls straight to the other side.

On the way back to the dormitories, they pass last groups of kids in the corridors, and Easy ignores their curious looks and climbs the stairs two at a time. He doesn’t say a word to the girls when he takes a right turn but Jerusalem follows him to the boys’ dormitories. Regina and Lavinia don’t.

Easy ignores his own dormitory and bursts into theirs instead, throwing himself down on Aubrey’s bed.

“Jesus Christ, I hate her!” he says, and it’s so comforting after the prolonged silence that Aubrey can’t help but smile. “I hate her, I hate her, I _hate_ her.”

“At least we know it’s mutual,” Jerusalem says. “You should have pushed her in the lake, you know. She was already wet anyway.”

“B-blood,” Quickly says, pointing a shaking finger. “Your foot’s all— sliced open, you know?”

“Is it?” Easy says, bored, and flexes it. Aubrey sees it then, a long gash on the sole, blood, dirt, and leaves.

“How did that happen?” Kipp says, watching it with fascination. 

“Slipped on a stone, or something,” Easy says with a shrug.

“Infirmary?” says Jerusalem. 

“Yeah, and then we’ll have to explain where we went and why he didn’t have his shoes on, brilliant,” Kipp snorts, shaking his head. “Let’s just clean it and wrap it with something and it should be fine. You didn’t bleed all over the corridors, right? Please tell me you didn’t.”

“God, God, _God_ , blood,” Quickly says, staring at his shaking hands. “Tetanus and germs and – Right. We need soap, and water, and bandages, and tea.”

“I think we can skip tea,” Jerusalem says, kinder than Aubrey would expect.

“Cotton swabs, too,” Quickly says, hitting his open palm with a fist, pale but determined. “And the tea’s for me, and _absolutely necessary_. Don’t worry Easy, I won’t let you die, even though you've ruined my socks and kind of deserve it.”

“Whatever you say,” Easy says, staring at the ceiling.

“I’ll get the tea,” Kipp says, tossing his coat onto his bed.

“I’ll get the rest,” Quickly says, clutching at his throat. “And won’t have a mental breakdown, because there’s no time. Jerry, can you get me some water?”

“Aye Aye Captain!”

“Aubrey, you stay for mental support.”

Easy snorts, but doesn’t say anything. When they leave, Aubrey perches next to Easy and feels like he’s imposing, even though it’s his own bed.

“I think you should take the sock off,” he advises, and Easy smiles, amused, and kicks his leg up across Aubrey’s own and wriggles his toes.

“If you insist,” he says and doesn’t move. Aubrey shakes his head and wonders how someone raised an orphan in a mice-infested building can act this aristocratic. He wraps his hand around Easy’s ankle and peels the sock off as slow as possible. The fabric makes a wet sound when it unglues from the wound, and it must hurt quite a bit but Easy keeps quiet.

“I get that you think I’m terrible,” he bursts out suddenly when Aubrey’s done with the sock, “but Regina cried that day she— you know, _the stain_. Menstruation, whatever. I saw her cry, after, alright? So I have every right to hate Lavinia and to threaten to push her in the lake because _she made Regina cry_ , and I can’t believe she’ll have a Chagall all to herself!”

Aubrey stares at him, caught off guard, and then pokes the edge of the wound with his fingertip. Easy recoils.

“I don’t think you’re terrible,” Aubrey promises, flicking a piece of bark off Easy’s heel. “You gave her your clothes.”

Easy blinks at him and Aubrey thinks that someone should finally paint him.

“I wanted you to think I was good,” he says, and Aubrey takes his fingers away, has blood there, on the very tips. “Did you?”

Aubrey opens his mouth, about to answer, when Quickly bursts into the room, unrolled bandage wrapped loosely around his throat like a scarf, rubber gloves on his hands, and a roll of toilet paper under his arm.

“No cotton swabs,” he says, flushed. “I had to improvise.”

Over the next half an hour, Quickly seems to have forgotten that blood is scary. He's serious and focused, his hands steady. He doesn’t take even one sip of the tea Kipp brought him, and when he digs a small pebble out of Easy’s wound, he goes white but doesn’t stop working. Once he’s finished bandaging Easy’s foot, he asks Easy to let him know if it’s too tight but, by then, Easy’s asleep, curled up on his side and drooling all over Aubrey’s pillow, foot still in Aubrey’s lap.

“What an oddball,” Jerusalem says, smiling at him. “Shall we wake him up?”

“Don’t” Aubrey says hurriedly. “Go grab dinner and bring him some for later, alright?”

“We’ll bring you some, too, AA,” Kipp says, arching an eyebrow. “Where’s Regina, anyway?”

“She’s off being polite and decent,” Jerusalem says, getting to her feet. “Blegh. Come, Doctor Quick, you deserve chicken after all this. No, no chicken? Salad, then. Up you go, _good_.”

Once they’re gone, Aubrey decides to finish their conversation, even though Easy will sleep through it.

“I don’t need you to be good,” he says. “I just need you to be you.”

*

“If you tell Ezra this, I’ll kill you,” Lavinia tells Aubrey when he bumps into her in the library, “but I lied about the painting.”

Aubrey stares at her, waiting for her to go on.

“I just wanted to rile him up, alright? Father didn’t really buy the Chagall,” Lavinia explains. She has the copy of _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ in her hands, and Aubrey knows the preface by heart.

All art is quite useless, and yet here they all are.

“It’s just as well, too,” Lavinia goes on. “If Father had actually bought the Chagall, I’d feel obliged to gift it to the little git now.”

“Never do anything like that to him again,” Aubrey tells her calmly, and she raises an eyebrow.

“Or what?”

“I don’t know,” he admits. “But I don’t want to have to find out.”

Lavinia doesn’t reply but Aubrey knows she’ll listen. After all, three days after returning Easy’s holey coat, she insisted he sneak out to Bullford with her and bought him a new one, blue and expensive, with inside pockets and shiny buttons.

Aubrey wonders what it’d be like to have millions and be able to buy a Chagall on a whim, and decides that he never wants to know.

He hopes Easy doesn’t, either.


	13. something old, something blue, february 1999

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the inciting incident of one librarian's life, a couple of trains, and the Norfolk coast

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Me putting Monet's Open Sea as the painting for this chapter, patting myself on the shoulder for being cruel*
> 
> Sorry for taking so long but uni assignments have finally caught up with me :,,,) Anyway here's more of Alfie the Librarian, yay. (Yes, he does get every other chapter, but it's very temporary) Also TRIGGER WARNING this chapter has more pretentious bullshit than all the previous ones put together an then some. Sorry not sorry.

Claude Monet, _Open Sea_

*

Desire builds me a rotten church to lay down in.

~Duncan Slagle, _Ghazal for the Loneliness that Must Have Killed Lilith_

*

See you later, the man had said, but three weeks and nothing.

Alfie never went back to that café and has been mourning the large cappuccinos more than he’s been mourning his copy of _The Waves_. He goes to the café across the road instead, watches the inside of the other one through the windows, hunches his shoulders and wonders if that’s how you go crazy, barely past thirty, nowhere near past stupid, lonely to death.

It’s not even that terrible want he remembers ringing in his bones because it wouldn’t fit in his veins alone, really. It’s how the man – Dante – looked so much like a painting that someone had treated with a knife, and how if December had seen him, she wouldn’t forgive Alfie for forgetting all about him.

Not that Alfie has. Clearly.

This time he does start by grading essays, reading through Ezra Weiss’s passionate defense of Lady Macbeth which boils down to ‘alright, she was evil, so what?.’ He notes that little Ezra’s use of commas leaves nothing to be desired even if he overdoes it with exclamation marks. It’s not exactly Regina’s insightful “Lady Macbeth, or ‘dearest partner of greatness’” but they both seem to be of an opinion that it doesn’t matter whether Lady Macbeth is a bad person, only whether she is a loyal one, even if Regina uses well-structured arguments to drive her point home and Ezra, in turn, relies too much on dramatic punctuation. Then there’s Francis—

It’s just how utterly _bizarre_ the whole encounter was, strange enough to mark the beginning of a novel if Alfie’s life was one, and he’s tired of how it _isn’t_ even though he’s always needed— even though he’s always been waiting for it to be.

He likes his life fine, except—

Five years old, stuck in his matchbox of a house, learning letters so he could hide between them because vodka every night, the slamming of doors downstairs, and him too scared to go to the toilet for fear of making the floorboards creak, wetting his pants.

Eleven years old, stuck in his matchbox of a school, head down the toilet because that’s how it always is, a dead grasshopper in his sandwich after he failed to keep an eye on his lunchbox once, the inevitability of how he’d grow up short-sighted and the beginnings of some dreadful awareness, stick limbs before PE and how he shouldn’t be allowed in the same changing room as boys, shouldn’t be allowed in the same changing room as girls, shouldn’t be allowed anywhere.

Seventeen years old, the slow drag of a matchhead along the side of his matchbox of a world, six books in his backpack, no socks, and nowhere to stay but nowhere to go either, a whole island of country roads and what would happen if he got to the ocean? Maybe he’d keep walking, water up to his knees, up to his useless slab of a heart, up to his treacherous eyes, always looking at people that weren’t for him. A lost boy, taken by blue and swallowed by sand, spit out on the other side or not, one of those insignificant nobodies who disappear in the creases of the folded map of the world, except the world too swollen for that, nowhere to hide, everyone in plain sight.

He felt invisible anyway.

Years later, when December offered him the position, he refused at first, because he’d made himself into someone who could pretend to have options, a pathetic thing not fooling anyone but strong enough to at least _try_.

And now, small cappuccinos and black leather, square tables with corners you could hurt yourself on, nothing like across the road.

He was such a harvest thing, that Dante Someone. Maybe the January frost has defeated him, maybe it was like a card game. Hard to believe something could beat a splash of blood dressed as a person but it’s a warmer thought than— Well, Alfie has known himself to be boring for quite a while but being amusing for ten minutes only to become boring again, that's a whole other thing.

Anyway, Francis Quick, trying to defend Lady Macbeth even though it’s clear he doesn’t know how, writing that she ‘didn’t know any better’ and there’s no defending _that_. Thank God he knows his grammar at least, or it’d have to be a D since—

“ _I laid their daggers ready;/He could not miss ‘em_ ,” says that rough voice that Alfie still remembers even though he doesn’t remember what day of the month it is, doesn’t remember his postcode. “ _Had he not resembled/My father as he slept, I had done’t_.”

The man, Dante, takes the seat opposite Alfie and smiles the way he did three weeks ago, like a surgery gone wrong, a mismatched face and no stitches. Alfie remembers slicing his finger when opening an envelope with a kitchen knife a few days ago, how, when he instinctively put the finger in his mouth, the blood tasted just like that morning had, something unexpected, all rust and foreboding.

“A bit sentimental, isn’t it?” Dante Someone says, leaning back in the chair. He has a toothpick stuck in his mouth, and his hair looks softer than the last time, like he’s washed it this morning and like it hasn’t had time to dry coarse yet. “Fathers be our death, I suppose.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Alfie says, hates how strangled he sounds. “I’m fatherless.”

Dante Someone raises his eyebrows, and his whole face rearranges like a moving puzzle, like it’s not something smashed to pieces but something still in the process of being ruined. A car crash thing, impossible to look away from.

“What then?” Dante Someone says, body tilting forward, all interest, all cruel smell. Alfie wants to lean towards him so badly that he forces himself to lean back instead. “Are you a walking miracle? A parthenogenesis child escaped from the circus?”

“Parthenogenesis?” Alfie echoes, lost, and Dante Someone takes a sip of Alfie’s already-cold coffee, winces.

“That’s shite, isn’t it? Better across the road, can’t imagine why you’d switch to here,” he says in a teasing voice that implies he does know. “And look at you, an avid Virginia Whoever fan and yet a word you don’t know! Asexual reproduction, parthenogenesis, no need for sperm and an embryo anyway. It happens with water fleas, parasitic wasps, some fish.”

Alfie pries the cup from Dante Someone’s hands, ignores the skin contact, doesn’t care the coffee’s disgusting, only cares that it’s _his_.

“Lovely,” he says, “except I’m rather motherless, too.”

“Ah,” Dante Someone says with a slow smile, and Alfie wants to touch the break where it’s made uneven by scar tissue more than he’s ever wanted to touch anything before. He sits on his hands to keep himself from doing so. “A breathing impossibility, then.”

“You should order something if you’re going to stay,” Alfie croaks. “I’ve been here for an hour already with just the one cup of coffee, and don’t look now but that lady behind the counter? I’m guessing she’ll kick us out in five minutes tops.”

“That’s a shame,” Dante Someone says, amused. “I like my coffee drinkable, see.”

“Are you _stalking_ me?” Alfie dares ask and feels stupid right away.

Dante Someone arches his eyebrow, points to the café across the road.

“One could argue _you_ ’re stalking the possibility of me,” he says, grinning like he’s having the time of his life. “Rather badly, too. You were so vigilant there for a while and then Lady Macbeth stole all your attention. I walked past three times, you know, outside. I even waved.”

“This is all oh so funny to you, isn’t it?”

Dante Someone spreads his hands.

“I’m not exactly hiding it, am I?”

He pats the pockets of his coat, takes out a pack of cigarettes.

“You can’t smoke in here,” Alfie protests.

“I’m not going to,” Dante Someone laughs, the toothpick replaced with a cigarette already, the lady behind the counter yelling ‘sir’ in warning. “And I’m not ordering anything, either, since we’re leaving.”

“Oh, _are_ we?”

“We are,” Dante Someone confirms and smiles like the love interest in a harlequin would. ‘Rakish’ is how it’d be described. “I’m about to seduce you and all that.”

Alfie chokes on spit.

“Who are you again?” he demands, Dante Someone flicking a lighter on and off, on and off, on and off.

“How _boring_. What do you want, my NIN?” he says, hooded eyes, the quirk of a lip. “I’m the wind of change,” he goes on, stuffing the essays inside Alfie’s bag for him, already pushing back his chair. “The inciting incident of the story of your life, if you will.”

He stands next to the table, toying with the lighter, waiting for Alfie to get up. Alfie stubbornly stays seated.

“Alright, but where did you even _come_ from?”

“Unlike you, I’m not parentless, though might as well be,” Dante Someone says, dragging him outside by the arm, Alfie’s chair toppling to the ground with a loud crash behind them. “Good old sex, no condom, and here I am, the sore on the world’s ugly mug. Anyway, what nobody knows is that librarians are the best people for spontaneous trips and adventures. All those books, and they’re sitting in their dusty corners nose-deep in some novel or other just _dying_ for someone to ask. Come, come, we don’t have a whole day, do we.”

He lights the cigarette at last, and then he’s off, walking briskly down the street. Alfie stares after him and thinks three things at once: that he’s never told Dante Someone that he’s a librarian, that Dante Someone is a sight worth not having drowned in the Atlantic all those years ago, and that it doesn’t matter if novels end well or not – it only matters if they’re interesting enough to be printed in the first place.

After that, he stops thinking and follows.

*

Dante Someone makes them take a train, then another. He shows Alfie pre-bought tickets and drags him to an empty compartment, litter all over and no soul to complain about the smoking.

No soul but Alfie, and yet Alfie refrains.

“Where is it you’re taking me exactly?” he says, and it’s an effort to sound gruff because he feels something loosening inside him, the unexpected relief of an undone knot. “I have things to do, you know.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” Dante Someone says and makes an aborted gesture with his patchwork hand. “Go on then, grade your essays. I can even help if you like. I’m no Shakespeare expert but I know a thing or two about murder at least.”

Alfie blinks at him, refuses to ask. Dante Someone arches his eyebrows and gives him a lazy grin, stretches his legs until his shoes bump into Alfie’s, and it’s clearly deliberate since he doesn’t move his feet away, so Alfie doesn’t either.

Countryside flashing outside, a quilt of greens, nowhere-places all around, and Alfie could get off at the next station and disappear, and no one would— Only no, maybe it hasn’t all been for nothing after all, because he thinks December would worry, thinks she’d _look_.

“You could be a killer, taking me away from home to skin me alive,” he says, gnawing on his pen and wondering how to explain to Kipp Birdwhistle that dashes can’t and shouldn’t replace commas quite so often. He’s not sure if any suggestions he scribbles on his knee in a jolting train will be taken seriously anyhow, what with all the blots of ink.

“I could,” Dante Someone admits easily. “You’re here anyway. It’s that librarian blood.”

Alfie snorts. “There’s no such thing as _librarian blood_.”

“Sure there is,” Dante Someone insists, amused. “There’s oxygen in blood, right? And you lot keep breathing in all that old ink and paper… Must be getting to your heads, it’s only logical.”

“The only logical thing is tomorrow’s newspaper headlines, ‘Man found dead in Norfolk, terribly mutilated’,” Alfie mumbles.

“I wouldn’t mutilate you,” Dante Someone says easily. “You’re far too pretty.”

Alfie swears at the ink spilling all over the essay, rubs it off with his sleeve, stares.

“I’m thirty-one years old.”

“Sure,” Dante Someone agrees. “ _Pretty_.”

Alfie sighs, slides low in his seat.

“Why _Norfolk_ of all places? Can I have a look at the map at least?”

“‘The map’, he says, as if I have one,” Dante Someone laughs, shaking his head. “Do I look like the sort to carry maps and all that?”

Alfie stares at him in disbelief.

“ _Norfolk_ ,” he says, like it’s an argument, because it _is._ “I can never understand what folks from there are saying.”

“Good thing we won’t be talking to anyone, then.”

“Oh, murder in a secluded area, smart.”

Dante Someone grins, and Alfie glances at his watch. It’s afternoon already, hours of travel just to get there, wherever ‘there’ is in the first place.

“Why on Earth did I agree to this again? Yeah, no, forget it, librarian blood, sure, why not. Let me rephrase that. Why on Earth did you think I would agree to this again?”

He shoots Dante Someone an accusing look.

“You have, how to say it, hungry eyes,” Dante Someone explains, staring at the ceiling. “Like that song from that film, what’s the name…”

“Do you mean _Dirty Dancing_?” Alfie asks, incredulous.

“Is that what it’s called?” Dante Someone says, eyebrows up. “It’s not that dirty, is it.”

Alfie shakes his head and goes back to grading the essays. He ignores the smoking, the clicking of Dante Someone’s lighter, and the countryside outside that reminds him of paying for train tickets with the little money he had in his youth, travelling just to travel, looking for somewhere where he’d survive or at least somewhere where no one would notice if he curled up and died.

*

Two trains and a long trek later, they’re walking through grass – still green despite the season – and the air is all salt.

“Overstrand Cliffs,” Dante Someone says, making his way towards the edge beyond which the North Sea spreads blue like a daydream, only who’d dream something this beautiful? “You alright there?”

Alfie has stopped, can’t move forward, can’t take one more step.

He’s never—

“I’ve never seen it before.”

“Hmm?”

“The sea, the ocean – anything.”

Dante Someone stops, glances at him over his shoulder.

“We live on a bloody island, Mr. Librarian."

Alfie shakes his head. He’s never let himself before – All his life, he stuck to this childish belief that this much water was where you disappeared, knew Earth wasn’t flat but thought it flat anyway, convinced the coast was where you could take a step and fall to nothing, _become_ it.

“Why would you take me here anyway?” Alfie asks, feeling uneasy. It's already sunset, always too early in winter, always catching him off guard. He wonders if this is when he gets murdered, wants to walk up to Dante Someone, feel his pockets for a knife, and hand it to him, say, get it over with, please. 

The sea has always meant endings, not beginnings.

“I consider these very cliffs here the end of the world,” Dante Someone tells him, and Alfie shivers from the cold wind, wants to put his fingers in his mouth for warmth but doesn’t, knows Dante Someone would stare, would say something, or wouldn't, and hard to tell which'd be worse. “And see, if you were ready to drop everything – even if everything is reading gothic literature and grading essays, mind you – and come with me to the end of the world, then I figure I don’t have to try at all. I mean, you’re already seduced, aren’t you?”

Alfie takes a step towards Dante Someone, takes another, walks past him, walks right up to the edge of the cliff.

He waits for the press of hands on his back giving him a shove but it never comes.

“I guess I get Monet now,” he says, staring at all that wide excess. He figures that if God exists, he must be such a spoiled, spoiled thing. “Do people kill themselves here all the time?”

“No, I don’t think,” Dante Someone says, coming to a stop next to Alfie, the very tips of his shoes over the edge. “Not enough audience.”

“Surely all this,” Alfie says, spreading his hands, “is audience enough.”

Dante Someone grabs Alfie’s collar, tugs, tugs again when Alfie ignores it, tugs until Alfie turns to look at him. He seems so out of place with his riddle of a face, here where everything fits like a perfect puzzle set.

“Usually, people ask after this long,” Dante Someone says, pointing to his face. “Are you polite, or do you not want to be disappointed? What are you imagining anyway? Knife fights, hungry lions?”

“Was it really that dramatic?” Alfie asks, and stifles the urge to reach out and feel the scars with his fingers. They look sharp enough to cut his skin open, and he imagines it like that: fingertip cut open and that taste of blood, were he to suck on it.

Rust and foreboding.

“Dramatic, sure,” Dante Someone admits. “Quite sad, too. Not sad like boo hoo, just sad like people in bars saying ‘Christ’ when I tell them and insisting on buying me drinks, which is why I never tell. I get them to buy me drinks for free anyway.”

“You’re not going to tell me at all, are you?” Alfie guesses, and Dante Someone taps his lips with two fingers, thoughtful. Alfie wonders if he’s doing it on purpose, if he knows Alfie wants to touch them, too.

“Well, you’re not going to sleep with me, either,” he says after a moment, like the two are the same thing.

Alfie sighs.

“I will, too,” he says, blowing on his hands to warm them. “Even if you don’t tell me. Even if you can’t prove you’re not a murderer.”

Dante Someone stares, surprised, and then laughs until it echoes right back at them in this never-ending quiet.

“Why would I try and prove something ridiculous like that?”

Alfie considers this, feels his grey, grey skin, even though he hasn’t really felt it in years, feels the uncomfortable rub of cotton all over, and feels his hair stand on end.

“Do you think Lady Macbeth was evil?” he asks, a test of a sort, and they’re even standing on the edge of a cliff, a test, too, this, ha.

“What does it matter?” Dante Someone says with a shrug. “She was loyal, wasn’t she?”

He flashes that half of a fucked-up smile and Alfie m e l t s, 

e

s x

e p

d l

o

and f

a

l

l

s all over again.

Later, he will remember it and the first and last book he will ever throw will be his copy of _Macbeth_.

Now, he d

r

o

w

n

s

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did google Norfolk, but still, if anyone's from there, I'm so sorry 
> 
> Thank you for reading <3


	14. motherless, march 1999

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> one mother, one not-mother, and one once-mother

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is probably the most normal chapter yet ha

John Lavery, _The Mother_

*

my fingers tearing at the flimsy curtain

of time which is and isn’t and will be

the stuff of which we’re made and unmade

~Marge Piercy _, My Mother’s Body_

*

It’s March when she comes. Aubrey is outside with Easy and Jerusalem, looking for a hairpin Jerusalem swears she must have lost somewhere on the grounds outside, in the clumps of grass that hasn’t been mown in almost a year and mud. It must be there, I _know_ it, Jerusalem insisted, dragging them outside even though it was after the rain and neither Aubrey nor Easy had Wellingtons. It’s my favourite hairpin and you two have nothing better to do anyway, she said, even though Aubrey had been playing Scrabble against himself and winning, and Easy had been reading something called _W or the Memory of Childhood._

(It’s about motherless boys, he explained when Aubrey asked. Motherless boys and this fucked-up island of athletes.)

“It’s bright pink so we should find it no problem,” Jerusalem says, skipping from one clump of grass to another, jumping around puddles. “A sort of Madonna pink,” she clarifies, as if that explains everything.

“I doubt it’s still pink,” Easy says, examining the sole of his shoe. Apart from mud and pebbles, there are two dead slugs all over it.

Aubrey sighs and glances longingly at Wilgefortis. Some other students are outside, too, out for a walk, but they’re not elbow-deep in early-spring dirt.

“Like looking for a needle in a haystack,” he complains, and Easy tilts his head, frowns.

“Or like looking for _The_ _Tower of Blue Horses_ in Europe,” he mumbles, scuffing his shoe, mud flying every which way. “I’ve been trying to— I can’t find anything about it in the library books.”

Ever since December Graham told them about the painting back in November, Easy has been mentioning it every now and then. He will say, I wonder if it’s been destroyed or if some old shit is keeping it over his mantelpiece, or he’ll say, what do I care about your missing underwear, Kipp, _The Tower of Blue Horses_ is missing, too, so shut up already. 

Aubrey imagines it for a second, _Dora Maar au Chat_ going missing too.

“I’ll help you look in the library after we’re finished here, if you want,” he offers. Easy stares at him for a moment, distrustful, and Aubrey remembers him bringing Aubrey all those letters to spell-check. So much more withdrawn now, Easy, and when…? “It’s fine if you don’t want me to. I’m just – just offering.”

Easy frowns at him, scratches his nose, leaves a smudge of mud behind. Aubrey fights a fond smile.

“No, it would be great,” Easy says, strangely wary. “Th—”

“FOUND IT!” Jerusalem yells triumphantly, the hairpin held up high, displayed proudly between two fingers like a particularly filthy war trophy. Jerusalem flicks an earthworm off it with her fingernail and beams. “Phew, that was quick! Well, I don’t know about you two, but I’m dying for a shower. See you!”

They both watch her skip towards the school, mud squelching as she gets smaller and smaller.

“Unbelievable,” Easy grumbles, glaring at the earthworm at his feet like he’s considering stepping all over it out of spite. “Next time, I’m demanding payment.”

“I think she’s spent all her pocket money on ice cream, hasn’t she?” Aubrey reminds him and Easy bristles.

“ _Unbelievable_ ,” he repeats vehemently.

“What is?” a bright voice asks right behind them. They both jump, and so does Aubrey’s heart because it’s not just any voice either. He takes a wobbling step aside, spins on his heel, and there she is, all March herself, mud-coloured hair and a green dress on, smile like a wink of the sun on something polished, no scarf.

“Trespassing,” says Easy.

“ _Mum_ ,” says Aubrey.

“That’s your _mum_?” Easy says, frowning at her. “I guess I see the resemblance. Huh. Now I know where you got all your ugly.”

Aubrey doesn’t manage to clap his hand over Easy’s mouth quite in time.

“Oh, feisty,” his mother says, intrigued, and reaches out to rub mud off Easy’s nose with a wettened thumb. He winces but doesn’t move away, strangely still. “Who are you, then?”

“I don’t talk to strangers,” Easy mumbles, kicking at the mud. Some of it hits the hem of Aubrey’s mother’s dress but she ignores it in favour of leaning closer and grinning at Easy with blatant fascination, like a scientist presented with a baby monkey, unsure if they should cuddle it or check under its tongue.

It occurs to Aubrey that if Easy was a duck, she wouldn’t shoot him right away.

“I don’t talk to strangers, either, but I think I’ll make an exception just the once,” she tells Easy. “You’re just too cute not to.”

For a horrifying moment, Aubrey expects her to reach out and stretch Easy’s cheeks. He doesn’t think it would go over well.

“How can you _smile_ so much,” Easy grumbles, arching an eyebrow at her. “And how come the two of you are related? You seem too well-adjusted to have given birth to him.”

He points a finger at Aubrey too, to add insult to injury. Aubrey’s mother quirks an eyebrow herself and grins at Aubrey.

“ _Anyway_ ,” she says, dusting off the skirt of her dress. “I was thinking tea in that lovely town a few miles away, Bullford, was it? What do you say? You should join us… What’s your name again?”

“Ezra,” Easy says, all serious. “Weiss.”

“Shirley,” Aubrey’s mother says gravely, pointing a finger at her chest. “Allen.”

“Pleasure’s all mine,” Easy says, and Aubrey’s mother bursts out laughing.

“You look like the most miserable boy in the world, but. Would you join us for tea, then, Ezra? I think you could use some.”

Easy scowls at her.

“What is it with you British people and thinking tea is some magic elixir that makes everything better? Headache? How about some tea! Money troubles? Tea again! Murder? Why of course—”

“What, you’re not British yourself, then?” Aubrey’s mother interrupts, curious. Easy shuts up and eyes her with suspicion.

“Not the imperial overlord kind,” he says finally, rocking on his heels. “I’m a second-generation immigrant.”

Aubrey tilts his head, a silent question, but Easy pointedly ignores him, refusing to so much as glance at him.

“Oh, are you?” Aubrey’s mother says, all interest. “Well, to tell you the truth, I’m not a big fan of the British myself. It’s a real pain when you are one, and dating generations back, too. Anyway, we might not deserve tea, but we sure have it, and it just won’t do to let all the blessed Earl Grey boxes on this island of ours go to waste, will it?”

Just then, Easy sends her such a hostile look that Aubrey instantly knows that he already likes her, and a lot, too.

*

They conveniently bump into December Graham on the way to her office, Aubrey’s mother talking a mile a minute about canola fields and shortbread.

“Oh, Aubrey’s mum?” December Graham says with a warm smile. “What a lovely surprise, hmmm, Aubrey? And I see you’ve already picked up a stray, too.”

“I’m cleaner than a stray,” Easy protests and raises his arm as if to say, go on, like he expects someone to check under his armpit. He drops it almost right away, remembering himself, and Aubrey thinks that he wouldn’t have only a few months ago, wonders if it’s Jonathan Small’s doing or just growing up.

“That you are,” December Graham assures him fondly. “I assume you want to steal Aubrey here for a few hours, no? What about that one, are you taking him, too?”

Aubrey’s mother smiles, confident, competent, and she’s not a spectacular thing like December Graham, not someone John Lavery would paint, but Aubrey thinks that December Graham must recognize it in her all the same, how Shirley Allen might look mousy but isn’t, not at all.

“Do I have to fill out some forms, anything like that?”

“Normally, yes,” December Graham admits, and then makes a humming sound. “It’s so much hassle though. If you’d just have them back before dinner, how’s that sound?”

Aubrey’s mother smiles.

“Some place, Wilgefortis,” she says, and Aubrey wonders if the appraising note in her voice is an honest effort. “Aubrey wouldn’t hear of going anywhere else. His father had him set for Saint Nectan’s, see. Aubrey worked at him for weeks, writing whole dissertations about why here wouldn’t be a mistake.”

Aubrey can feel Easy watching him curiously and wishes his mother would stop, almost slaps a hand over the back of his neck where his exposed skin must be flushing red.

“I’m glad the dissertations worked, then,” December Graham says. “Aubrey is quite invaluable.”

 _Invaluable_? _Him_?

“Would you like a tour, maybe?” December Graham offers, quirking an eyebrow. “To see the paintings.”

“Oh, it’s fine, I’m not an art enthusiast like this one here,” Aubrey’s mother laughs, reaching out to rub the cotton of Aubrey’s collar between two fingers. “I appreciate paintings fine, but I like less permanent things better.”

“Paintings are not permanent though, are they?” December Graham says, kindly, but with a wry smile. “It just seems like they are, what with most of them so still and surviving us, too.”

It’s only early afternoon but the light falling into the hall through the windows is the kind of warm gold that makes the two of them seem permanent themselves, caught in amber mid-conversation, and, for a second, Aubrey almost hates his mother for coming here, and for how because she has, he’ll soon have to bear seeing her go.

At home, sometimes, she would hum that song, _he hit me and it felt like a kiss_ , and he remembers December Graham humming it, too, gathering her things between classes, blowing loose tendrils of her hair off her nose. How strange that they should both love it and not know it about each other, now that they’ve met.

He almost tells them.

“They’re not alive, either,” his mother says, returning the smile. “Paintings, I mean.”

Aubrey carefully doesn’t think about why she’d hate something trapped inside a frame, beautiful enough to be hung over the mantelpiece or ugly enough to be hidden in the attic, meant to be displayed or kept out of sight. Instead, he stares at the dirtied hem of his mother’s dress and thinks that they would like each other, her and December Graham, because neither of them seems concerned with all the mud the three of them have trailed here, like there are more important things. 

“Well, you never know,” December Graham says with a wink, and Aubrey remembers how she changed the words once, gathering her art history books, _he kissed me and it felt like a hit._ “Anyway, in that case, I’ll be on my way to pester my librarian about whoever it is he’s gone and fallen in love with this time. Have them back before six, alright? Oh, and if you’re thinking of going to a café, there are two on the main road in Bullford, but only the one on the right is worth checking out.”

Aubrey’s mother thanks December Graham and then she stares after her curiously as December walks away at a brisk pace, oxford shoes clicking on the marble.

“Well, that was certainly interesting,” she says, wetting the tip of her finger. “Won’t your parents mind me kidnapping you from school for the afternoon, Ezra?”

She glances at Easy and he squares his bony shoulders. He doesn’t look sad, not really. He doesn’t look anything.

“No,” he says quietly before Aubrey can so much as try to explain. “They won’t mind at all.”

*

She’s taken the car, and Aubrey wonders if his father tried to protest it, wonders if she even told him about this little trip of hers in the first place.

“So far, I’ve only scratched it in three places,” Aubrey’s mother says, beaming at them, that rare grin of hers like when she picks up something she’d shot, warm but heavy, like the orb of the summer sun. “It adds character, wouldn’t you say?”

She’s a good driver, really, but likes taking unnecessary risks. When there’s a turn ahead, she speeds up instead of slowing down.

Well, apart from when Aubrey’s in the car with her. Never then.

“Are you two getting in?” she prompts, except Easy isn’t. He’s standing at the curb, staring at the car like he’s never seen one before, and it occurs to Aubrey— They don’t really know anything about Easy’s family, about how they—

Except then Easy does get in the backseat, leaves the door open. Aubrey deliberates for half a moment, and then slides in next to him, for solidarity, wanted or not, instead of taking the passenger seat. His mother catches his eye in the rear-view mirror, nods, winks.

“Well then,” she says, “Ready, steady, go.”

“Easy,” Aubrey says as she backs away. “You should buckle up.”

Easy stares at him, confused.

“The seatbelt.”

Easy follows Aubrey’s gaze, reaches for the belt, and then gives it a testing tug, stares.

“What do I do with it?” he asks irritably, fumbling with the belt and scowling at it whenever it doesn’t magically stay after he lets go of it. 

“Oh,” Aubrey says. “Don’t tell me you’ve never been in a car before.”

Easy looks away, scratches at his cheek. When his hand drops, Aubrey wonders if that’s why the skin there is red.

“You boys ready?” his mother calls out, a cassette already in, Kate Bush singing about making a deal with God.

“Here, let me,” Aubrey says and clumsily reaches around Easy to grab the belt. He gives it a tug, buckles Easy up, and pats the belt once for good measure, the wool of Easy’s jumper rough under his hand. Christ. It’s doing things to him, that Easy wouldn’t – that he never – He feels like he ought to look away as Easy’s sitting there, confused by something so every day, because it should be _private_. “All ready,” he says, too loudly, and, in the mirror, his mother’s eyes are softer than he remembers seeing them in years.

Next to him, Easy curls his fingers around the belt, tightens them, holds on. Aubrey looks away, won’t look, and feels the rawness of it all like a dig of something sharp between two ribs, a violent, unasked for jab to a soft spot.

*

When they order tea, the waitress stares at their muddy boots but doesn’t say a word about it.

“How do you pronounce that?” Easy says, turning the small menu card this way and that. “Shaaamo— Camo?— mile.”

“Oh, you don’t want to drink chamomile, trust me,” Aubrey’s mother advises. “It really does taste like flowers, see, and that is decidedly not a good thing.”

Easy scowls, and, for a moment, Aubrey thinks he’ll order chamomile out of spite but, in the end, he goes for cranberry.

“So what were you boys up to in that field?” Aubrey’s mother asks, tweaking his nose. “And what’s with the hats? Not part of the uniform, are they?”

Aubrey calls her every week without fail, and talks about classes and paintings and assigned reading but doesn’t, no matter how often she asks, talk about his friends. There’s always someone there, making calls from a phone two feet away from Aubrey, and he always worries that if he mentions the others, he’ll be corrected, _they’re not really your friends, are they, Allen, don’t go deluding yourself_. Another fear, too: his father listening in on the landing phone, hearing Aubrey talk about people who are not teachers and about pastimes that are not studying the constitution, already making plans to call Saint Nectan’s headmaster and have Aubrey transferred.

“They’re a statement,” Easy explains, reaching up to take his newsboy cap off. His curls are flattened to the side underneath, and if Jerusalem were here, she’d tousle them back to normal for him. Kipp would, too. Regina, perhaps. Maybe even Quickly.

“Like a fashion statement?” Aubrey’s mother inquires, and Easy shoots the hat a doubtful look.

“Sure.”

Aubrey’s mother quirks an eyebrow and Aubrey’s sure Easy likes her now because he proceeds to explain rather than sliding low in his chair and stubbornly staring at the table. Aubrey’s heart misses a beat, but there’s nothing about sneaking out or bullies in Easy’s version, only Quickly’s own hat (“Francis, actually,” Easy clarifies, “but that’s what we call him”) and Jerusalem quoting _The Three Musketeers_.

It’s a relief, in a way, to sit there and have it all told, to see how Aubrey’s mother’s shoulders slump in relief when she realizes that he does have friends.

“Anyway,” Easy says after he’s done explaining that he expects to see all the girls who flirt back when Kipp flirts with them wear glasses in the new school year. “Toilet.”

His chair scrapes loudly when he gets up and leaves them alone.

“Some individual,” Aubrey’s mother comments, staring after him. “Say, is he the one?”

For a moment, Aubrey’s mind is a white blank, distant humming and the effort to not think about the words.

“The one?” he repeats stupidly.

“The orphan,” his mother clarifies, and Aubrey stares at her, tries to get out of all the white of his thoughts.

“Oh. _Oh_ , how did you know?”

“His hands are so small,” she says simply, with an almost sad smile.

“That doesn’t mean anything, does it?”

“No, no. Of course it doesn’t. He just— I don’t know. He looks like he hasn’t been loved enough,” she explains hurriedly, glancing towards the bathroom. “Sort of malnourished, but not like he hasn’t been getting enough vitamins or is too pale. Just the way he moves and talks… I don’t know, a bit bruised, maybe, if the lack of something could bruise, too, and not just harmful presence.”

Aubrey balls up a napkin, wishes they could change the topic. He remembers Easy’s hands – those small hands – curled tight around the seatbelt, and feels a sudden urge to tip the vase with a single daffodil in it placed in the middle of their table until it falls and water spills all over, distracts them both from how Easy should be too small to seem miserable but isn’t.

“So how come you’re here anyway?” he asks instead, trying to compose himself. His mother smiles and reaches for his hand. It always feels a bit strange when she touches him, like even when it’s intuitive, it’s because she’s taught herself to touch him like that, not effortless but feigning to be.

She’s always been so good to him.

“A spontaneous trip, if you like,” she says, knocking her shoe into his under the table. “I like the countryside, and I like driving, and I like you.”

She smiles sweetly and then makes an ‘aha’ sound.

“If I ask Ezra if they threw you in a lake, will he tell me?”

“They did not throw me in the lake,” Aubrey insists, and she laughs, asks him about things she already knows. Aubrey patiently answers all her questions, sips his tea, frowns when his mother grins at him.

“I’ll ask him anyway,” she insists.

“I don’t ever lie to you.”

“No,” his mother agrees, leaning back in her chair. “You omit. Maybe they pushed you in, maybe they tripped you up and you ‘fell in all by yourself.’ You don’t lie to me with words, but you always lie with the lack of them.”

“Ask him, then,” Aubrey says. “When he gets back.”

“When he gets back,” his mother confirms and then glances at her watch. “Say, do you think he’s in there so long to give us some time alone, or because he can’t stand the very sight of me?”

“No, he likes you,” Aubrey says carefully, glancing at his own watch. He’s gone and forgotten it all over again, that Easy can be thoughtful.

“I thought so,” his mother agrees with a self-satisfied smile. It looks young on her, the kind of a brilliant grin she might have flashed when she won a relay race in school or spelled a long word right. “It’s just that I’m your mother.”

“Ah,” Aubrey says, keeping himself from tearing a napkin to shreds. He’s always been more relaxed around his mother than his father, but ‘more relaxed’ is not ‘relaxed’, never has been and never will be. “I don’t think it’s like that.”

“That’s kind of him, then.”

Aubrey wonders if the gaps in their conversation are deliberate, something he’s free to fill with whatever he sees fit. He wonders if she’s expecting him to ask about his father, the absence of him already so much louder than anything either of them could say.

“It’s good to see you,” he tells her instead, and his mother smiles, knows what he’s really saying right away.

“Yes,” she says. “I’ve missed you, too.”

When Easy gets back, none of them mention that he’s been gone almost half an hour.

“How did you boys meet, anyway?” Aubrey’s mother asks, tearing a sugar packet open over her now cold tea. It feels strange suddenly, Aubrey and Easy at one end of the table, her at another, two kids and a parent asking them how it all started, and he remembers seeing it before, in some film or other, maybe, only different context.

He thinks of it for a moment, hoisting Easy up in that train, holes in his jumper and the skin there moist with sweat, how, at the time, Aubrey hadn’t touched anyone apart from his mother for months.

“They stole my compartment,” Easy lies, and Aubrey sits there and listens to him making up stories, almost believes them, and wonders why it should be a relief when the way they really met was only that little bit different, and not at all bad.

*

She drops them back and kisses Aubrey goodbye.

“Be good,” she says, then laughs at herself. “Well, you always are.”

“Speed limits,” Aubrey reminds her, and she shakes her head.

“You be good, too,” she says, and kisses Easy on the cheek, too. Easy’s fingers twitch at his side, but he doesn’t touch the spot, only nods. “Are you quite sure about the lake?”

“Positive,” Easy confirms, and she smiles at the two of them, salutes, opens the car door. She hesitates with her hand still on the handle and then glances in the wing mirror. She turns around, wordlessly adjusts Aubrey’s collar, and then finally gets in.

Aubrey watches the car slowly drive away down the dirt road, and wonders if his mother would catch it if he messed up his collar now, if she’d turn back.

“My mother,” Easy says, flexing his fingers and staring at his hands, “killed herself when I was a few months old.”

Aubrey stares at the top of his head, where the curls are still flattened. He remembers Jerusalem telling them that she needed that hairpin back hours before, she needed it back because it was a gift from her mum, and would always bring her luck.

“Apparently,” Easy adds.

Aubrey opens his mouth but Easy shakes his head. “No, shut _up_ , don’t _say_ anything.”

Aubrey doesn’t, and so they just stand in silence next to the school gate for a moment, sun spilling over the horizon like a cracked egg, and how cruel of the world to allow sunsets.

Aubrey glances at Easy’s hands and knows what his mother meant now. He remembers that thing adults do, how they’ll press their finger to the inside of a baby's palm, waiting for it to curl around it. Easy’s hands, he understands, haven’t had anything to curl around for longer than just about anyone else’s.

"Come on," Aubrey says gently. " _The Tower of Blue Horses_ , remember?"

Somehow, he doubts Easy has forgotten.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> look at me mentioning W or the Memory of Childhood in this story only because I should be writing en essay on it and feel guilty about doing this instead 
> 
> Also, this is not the end of Easy's backstory, I promise, but he's kind of like those snails that just won't stick their head out of their shell once you pick them up so it'll take him a while


	15. and no sixpence in his shoe, march 1999

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> temporary things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry i will start updating it more often like i used to soon, promise 
> 
> Also you will hate me a little when I post the next chapter, just a heads-up
> 
> And this rhyme is so funny cause according to wikipedia the sixpence in the bride's shoe was for warding off evil done by suitors which............. fits so well, I cannot

Delilah Smith, _Mouse Trap_

*

never forget that softness is strength, unflinching

against the knife and it is also the knife.

~Jess Rizkallah, _Ghada says_

*

Dante never gives him back _The Waves_ even though they see each other every week, and Alfie’s coming to terms with the fact that he might never see the book again. It’s decent as trade-offs go because who cares about Virginia Woolf when Dante’s there, smiling like bad news but so very good.

(That’s a lie. Alfie will always care about Virginia Woolf).

“Dried tomatoes?” Dante will say, peering into Alfie’s fridge, mustard in the corner of his mouth. “ _Really_?”

It’s not routine, because Alfie might see Dante every week, but he never knows to expect it. Dante will find him in a pharmacy line and will say “Laxatives, Alfie?” very loudly even though Alfie will be buying vitamin C. He’ll knock on Alfie’s door at 4 am, will ring the doorbell at 7 am, and – on one memorable occasion – will break in at 11 pm. He’ll beat Alfie to Alfie’s own place, too, back to the door as he reads through the neighbours’ correspondence or already inside, reclining in Alfie’s armchair and laughing at another book pulled off Alfie’s shelf, _The Secret Garden_ , _Wild Duck_ , _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ (“… _all art is quite useless_ , oh, _finally_ someone gets it!”), a half-empty wine bottle in hand.

“It’s not my fault your locks are no challenge,” said innocently, with a teasing smile.

It’s not routine, because Alfie never learns enough for it to ever have a chance to become boring. Dante Someone, born Sometime, aged Something, come from Somewhere, a walking question mark, only he doesn’t slouch like one, face like what Alfie used to do to half-written letters to his parents, tearing them to shreds before he could be tempted to send them. Thousand-and-one kisses and no explanation, the smell of blood and cigarettes there on the cuffs of Dante’s sleeves when he frames Alfie’s head between his arms and when the wall at Alfie’s back feels like it’s not there, like he’s standing on the edge of a Norfolk cliff and like the world’s not letting him fall off it.

There’s something almost vengeful about the way Dante kisses, like the world has wronged him and Alfie is, somehow, his petty revenge.

Alfie’s read too many books and God help him.

“So how often do you break the law, approximately?” Alfie asks Dante once, casual, boiling water for tea. It’s something he does: acknowledging that he knows Dante is trouble because acknowledgment is half success when one's trying to fix a problem, and maybe no one will notice that Alfie desperately doesn’t want this fixed, is not actually trying at all.

“Oh, I refrain from breaking it _occasionally_ ,” Dante says lightly and spits out a cherry seed so that it smacks Alfie in the cheek. Alfie sighs and wonders if it’s really possible for people to just appear, as if the world had been keeping them hidden in some forgotten pocket and then suddenly remembered to check it, said, oh, I forgot all about him, there you go. Alfie actively tries thinking of good things that are the same but all that ever comes to his mind are unexpected disasters, the swerve of a car and everything crushed to pieces before you could yell “care—”

Still, for something that is not routine, it’s scary how certain Alfie is that it will never change. There will never be anything other than all these arguments that feel like kissing and kisses that feel like arguing, no slowly gained understanding or trust, no warmth, no love. If there’s one thing Alfie knows about things that appear suddenly is that they disappear even faster, blink and they’re gone.

He tries not to blink.

It doesn’t mean a lot, he knows that much, but it means _some_ thing. It’s not intimacy or connection or anything like that, it’s just hands on skin when it's all about texture and not meaning. No feelings because -- Alfie knows this instinctively -- feelings amuse Dante, nothing less, nothing more.

He knows it even if he knows nothing else.

And yet, despite all this—

It’s the fifty-eighth time Alfie’s in love and it reminds Alfie of the ninth one, because this, too, tastes like incoming disaster. Dante learns of it, too, maybe because of some weird magnetism that Alfie will never understand, or because of the world’s twisted sense of humour, snooping around and somehow knowing to reach deep into Alfie’s underwear drawer and find the one sock without a pair, feel the folded letter stuffed inside it with rough fingers.

(They are rough, Dante’s fingers, and every time he touches Alfie, Alfie thinks to himself, _this is going to hurt_ , and tries not to cry when it doesn’t, which is always.)

“Oh?” Dante says, unfolding the letter, all ink-blots and crossed-out lines, and Alfie is too busy remembering being seventeen to pry it from Dante’s hands. He used to watch black-and-white films in the middle of the night, wrapped in a woollen blanket and drinking cold milk straight out of the bottle, thinking of a boy he would see in the school library sometimes, curled between two bookcases and reading Plato, arms like he worked in a mine but the dark smear on his cheek chocolate and not coal. Derrick Abernathy, who would smile politely whenever he caught Alfie looking, and Alfie wrote the letter while trying not to look, scribbling it on his knee in the middle of classes, biting the tip of his pen – the wrong tip, ink all over his lips later like a branding.

His father found the letter when it was still unfinished, read it with his finger tracing the words, barked “what’s ephemeral mean?” but still got the gist of it despite all the fancy and the lofty, said, alright, said get out, said no son of mine.

Later, they lie down on Alfie’s floor, and Dante says:

“Do you know why mouse traps work?”

Alfie thinks about it.

“The cheese is that tempting?” he guesses, and Dante laughs, which is like the sound of a sharp instrument cutting the air as you swing it, something less political than a guillotine and cruder than a knife.

“The mouse is that naïve,” Dante corrects with a wide grin, and Alfie stares at what he’s discovered about Dante’s smile: that it’s crooked not just because a scar cuts his lips in half but also because another goes from the corner of his lips and up. A fraud of a smile and Alfie often wonders if Dante looks self-satisfied even when hurting, only can’t ever imagine Dante hurting at all.

He tells December about him after much nagging on her part but doesn’t mention the scars.

“Dante, led to hell?” December jokes. 

Alfie smiles. “Leading to hell, more like,” he says, checking his watch. Five minutes and he has to be in the library to take over and Marge, the other librarian, is not too tolerant of tardiness. Alfie has been suggesting offering her early retirement to December for the past few months but December is stubborn about it, still gives him the hours he wants but insists on keeping Marge, who knows how to make an umbrella from scratch, remembers the Second World War and perhaps – and there are running bets on this – maybe even the first, and lets December win whenever they play noughts and crosses.

“See, not too old for a dramatic affair after all,” December says, cupping his cheek. It would have made him blush but now it's just comfort, a, here, my skin, your skin, we’re in this together.

“Old enough to know better,” Alfie mumbles, and she doesn’t ask, which is a relief because if she did he’d have to think of how to answer.

He remembers Norfolk, and thinks of how he doesn’t even have a postcard to show for it, not even a stamp. His first time seeing the sea, surviving it but no proof, the tickets in Dante’s pocket, and who knows what he’s done to them. Threw them away, most likely, not one sentimental bone in his body, and Alfie would know – he might not know Dante’s thoughts, but he certainly knows his bones.

He almost thought he wouldn’t, at first, and it went like this:

The two of them stumbling into Alfie’s flat, tripping over coats, and Dante’s mouth and Dante’s hands, scrambling Alfie’s brain to no-thoughts, and Alfie wouldn’t have it, made an impatient noise, gripped Dante’s hair, said, hey.

Dante stopped, stared at him, raised an eyebrow.

Alfie felt stupid, and fifteen, but refused to let it go.

“Can you stop touching me for one moment,” he said, giving Dante’s hair a small tug, “so that I can touch you instead?”

Dante tilted his head, amused.

“Whatever for?”

Alfie stared at him, didn’t understand. There was something between them just then, in that five-inch space, besides the quiet and the lack of touch, something scary and raw.

“What, has it not occurred to you that I might _want_ to?” Alfie said, and nothing made sense, not Dante’s lazy blinking, not the surprise all over his face even though Alfie hadn’t thought anything could surprise him, not the way he quickly glanced down at his open hands.

“Now that you mention it,” he said slowly, “I don’t think it has.”

No trace of regret, only confusion, and they just stood there for a moment, watching each other, the heavy truth of it there to stay, about to watch whenever they kissed.

Alfie kissed him anyway and thought that even if it was shallow and temporary, it still was. It still was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading <333


	16. closing sea, april 1999

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> butter is put in tea, books are rearranged, and august comes in april

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am so sorry in advance,,,

Adelaide Claxton, _The Party on the Stairs_

*

Surely spring has been returned to me, this time not as a lover but a messenger of death

~Louise Glück, _Vita Nova_

*

It’s 3 am when Easy wakes Aubrey up by poking him with the library copy of _The Age of Innocence_ that Aubrey was reading when he fell asleep.

“What now?” Aubrey asks drowsily, and Easy frowns at him and digs his finger into the corner of Aubrey’s eye.

“Crust,” he says, wiping his finger off on Aubrey’s shirt. “Remember that thing Jerusalem said about butter tea? She was so— obnoxiously _gleeful_ about it.”

‘Obnoxiously gleeful’ is not something Easy would have said even a month ago, Aubrey knows that much even half-asleep. He’d have said ‘fucking happy’ instead, or some other such crude thing.

“Alright?” Aubrey mumbles, noting that both Kipp and Quickly are fast asleep, the former snoring like a very noisy car engine.

“I want one,” Easy announces. Outside the window, the moon is but a crescent but, somehow, it’s still enough light to see the wonderful resolve in Easy’s eyes.

“I see,” Aubrey says, pushing himself up. “Can’t it wait till morning?”

Easy scowls.

“Think about it,” Aubrey goes on. “Do you really want to break the rules just to attempt to make a hot beverage that will most likely, at first try, be quite disgusting?”

Easy does think about it. He taps two fingers against his lip and then gives a brisk nod.

Recently, Aubrey noticed that he always has a hard time saying no to Easy. He doesn’t think it’s peer pressure, because he finds saying no to Jerusalem much easier, and she’s the one who keeps insisting one does something until one agrees, threatening one with creative forms of physical violence such as ‘I will shove my finger deep into your ear when you least expect it, AA, I swear I will.’ It’s quite worrying but not worrying enough to warrant overanalysing so, mostly, Aubrey’s been ignoring it, or, how he likes to call it in his head, ‘prioritizing and pursuing more pressing trains of thought.’

“Alright, then.”

“Wow,” Easy says, amazed. “You’re such a doormat.”

Aubrey rubs his eyes and regrets just about every decision he’s ever made.

“This doormat is about to break the rules just because you want tea,” he points out, tapping his chest with his finger. Easy rolls his eyes, and passes Aubrey his socks. Aubrey doesn’t bother changing, only throws a bathrobe over his sleepwear and ignores the look Easy gives him. It’s perfectly normal to have one at the age of thirteen, no matter what Jerusalem says and no matter what Easy thinks.

“Do you have a torch?” he asks.

Easy grins. “Quickly does,” he says and digs one out of Quickly’s underwear drawer. “I don’t know what he needs one for, since he goes to sleep at sunset like some grandma with Alzheimer or nytaclopia, that not-seeing-after-dark thing, like in hens. He told me all about it himself, the irony.”

“Nyctalopia,” Aubrey corrects when Easy has his hand on the door handle.

“Huh?”

“It’s, well, it’s ny- _c_ -talopia.”

Easy stares at him wordlessly and Aubrey curses being sleepy, and curses being himself.

“Right,” Easy says slowly. “Do you know _every_ thing?”

Aubrey shakes his head, and Easy repeats ‘nyctalopia’ three times like he’s trying to remember it. Aubrey thinks it must mean something, that he’s allowed to witness it.

“Just be _quiet_ ,” Easy instructs him once they’re out in the corridor, as if Aubrey is ever loud. He turns the torch on and puts it under his chin like he’s a horror-film apparition, except he doesn’t look like one, not at all. His eyelashes are too long, and his face is too familiar – Aubrey thinks it would take him years to forget it.

The walk to the kitchen is not long, a couple flights of stairs down, past the library, unblinking paintings either not looking at them or pretending not to. There’s a draught, a window left open somewhere in the school, Aubrey’s ankles cold as they creep through the corridors.

Once inside the kitchens, Easy flicks the light on, and Aubrey near jumps out of his skin when Lavinia Pye of all people drops a tin box at their sight and startles like something electrocuted, only to scowl and blow stray hair off her face. She collects herself fast, Aubrey will give her that.

“Well, well, well,” she says with a small, self-satisfied smile. “Who do we have here?”

“Don’t ‘well, well, well’ us,” Easy snaps. “You were here first.”

“At least the water’s already boiled,” Aubrey says, unnecessarily. Lavinia hasn’t exactly stopped being a menace but ever since the lake incident, she’s been pretending to be making their lives a living hell rather than actually committing to the cause and ruining them in earnest.

“I’m not sharing my water with you!” Lavinia scoffs, throwing a panicked glance at the kettle. Aubrey almost expects her to cradle it protectively and braces himself for the scream she’ll no doubt let out when it proves hot to the touch.

“You so are sharing,” Easy says, with an offended air. “I’m declaring a communist regime.”

“Historically speaking, that never ends well,” Aubrey points out. “Well, not historically speaking, too, I suppose.”

“Not for the Lavinias of this shitty world of ours, no,” Easy agrees. “What are you doing here, anyway? You break rules even less often than he does.”

He waves his hand towards Aubrey and Aubrey sighs. He wishes he could be a name for once and not the thing for Easy to point his index finger in the vague direction of.

“I can’t sleep,” Lavinia confesses reluctantly, lifting her chin as if to say, go on, just _try_ and laugh at me. “I keep having nightmares.”

Easy’s shoulders relax a bit when she says it, and he doesn’t say it but it’s there between them anyway, unacknowledged, a, _you have nightmares too_?

“Have you ever tried tea with butter?” he asks her.

Lavinia’s shoulders relax, too, and it hits Aubrey that he’s never seen her like this before, that she's always wound tight like a spring.

“No,” she says warily. “Why?”

“We’re going to make some, and it’s going to be disgusting, but tomorrow we’ll tell Jerusalem it was the tastiest thing we’d ever had,” Easy explains. “Do you want some?”

Lavinia stares at them suspiciously, like she thinks it’s a trap. Aubrey tries a reassuring smile, but it only causes her frown to deepen. Easy waits a bit and then grabs a chair and climbs it to reach a cupboard. Aubrey considers telling him he could reach the shelves from the ground but by the time he decides Easy wouldn’t get offended if he did, Easy’s already prepared three mugs and put the chair away.

The kitchens are divided into two parts, the one that’s for students, and the one that’s off-limits, for staff only. The room they’re in is the one they can access at any time of the day to get a drink, supplied with a kettle and an assortment of teas, as well as crackers, fresh bread, and a choice of jam. Aubrey remembers it as much less cosy from their first few weeks here, before December Graham came to Wilgefortis and started sneaking snacks into the cupboards, much to the headmaster’s annoyance. Nowadays, chocolate, candy, and biscuits will appear in the room at the oddest of times, and, apart from the standard blue mugs, there are quite a few strange ones that December Graham has brought here over the months, some of them chipped and scratched, some shiny and new, all of them ridiculous. Easy picks a hideous orange one the size of a barrel, with green polka dots all over, one with a picture of a unicorn on it, and one with ‘Robespierre of the year’ written across its front in pink. Aubrey wouldn’t be surprised if they all turned out to be December Graham’s favourites.

“So how do you make this butter tea then?” Lavinia asks, claiming the Robespierre mug, which is strangely fitting. “Do you just dump butter in there? That sounds disgusting alright.”

“Definitely not,” Aubrey says.

“Definitely yes,” says Easy.

“I’m pretty sure you have to blend it.”

“We don’t _have_ a blender.”

“Which is why it really will be quite disgusting.”

“ _Exactly_.”

“You’re still fully committed to this idea, aren’t you?”

Easy nods solemnly and pours the boiled water into the mugs. He lets the teabags soak for a moment, and then drops a piece of butter in his mug. They all watch it in silence, and Aubrey wonders if they’re waiting for something.

“That’s anticlimactic,” Lavinia decides. 

“So is your personality,” Easy says. It earns him a kick to the ankle. Never a gentleman, he kicks back.

“Why is it just the two of you anyway?” Lavinia asks, adding milk to her tea and doing the same for Easy when he shoves his mug her way.

“Aubrey is a tea nerd,” Easy explains seriously. “I thought he’d do better than this.”

“There’s no such thing as a ‘tea nerd,’ Aubrey mumbles and stares when Lavinia adds milk to his tea. She stirs it for him, too, and he wonders if she’ll be horrible to them next year, or if it’ll be more like now. He tries to imagine it, all of them back from the holidays, suntanned and too rested to bother with hate.

“The origins of Earl Grey?” Easy asks and sounds genuinely curious, too, head tilted to the side and eyes open wide.

“Well, story goes a Chinese man gifted the first blend of Earl Grey to one Lord Charles Grey after Grey supposedly saved the man’s son from drowning, but it has been proven false. In actuality, Lord Grey never set foot in— oh, _really_.”

Easy grins and takes the first sip of his tea.

“Well?” Lavinia says after he’s done smacking his lips and frowning.

“It could be worse,” Easy decides.

“Really?”

“Well, it could be sewage.”

Frankly, it is quite disgusting, but here’s the thing: they all sit there, huddled around the small rickety table, and drink it anyway. Lavinia sits curled up like a cat and not rod-straight like she would in classes, and her socks are pink, one with a hole at the heel. She’s the most human Aubrey’s seen her yet, and he stares until she catches him at it and scowls.

“He does that,” Easy says as soon as she opens her mouth. “He doesn’t mean anything by it.”

“I do what?” Aubrey demands, confused.

“Stare,” Easy explains, arching his eyebrow like it should be obvious. “You stare _all the time_.”

“…I do?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Easy insists, impatient. “You _do_.”

Lavinia looks between them with a mixture of confusion and her usual contempt.

“Anyway,” Easy says, leaning towards her with a grin that’s almost feral, something twelve-year-old boys should be both too young and too civilised for. “It doesn’t mean that he’s in love with you or anything like that, so don’t get any ideas.”

Aubrey finds it strange that Easy, whose usual reaction to anything love-related is an exaggerated ‘yuck,’ should think that it needs to be said. 

“What are you, his guard dog?” Lavinia snorts. “I can’t think of how that’d be beneficial, seeing as you’re all bark and no bite.”

“Oh, I can bite you,” Easy assures, tilting his head and opening his mouth as if to show off his incisors, and Aubrey feels the urge to push his chin up so as to force it closed but keeps his hands curled around his mug. “Like this,” Easy adds, snapping his teeth together three times.

Lavinia watches, unimpressed, and then makes a circling motion with her index finger at the side of her head. Aubrey smiles because, for the two of them, this might be the closest they’ll ever get to friendly.

“Anyway, what are your nightmares about?” Easy asks, slurping his tea. Lavinia bristles and draws back in her chair but her shoulders soon sag. She starts drawing circles on the surface of the table with her finger, every now and then shooting them both suspicious glances.

“Things,” she says at last, defensive, and Easy doesn’t make fun of her for it, maybe because he too, like Aubrey, can sense there’s more coming. “Voices calling me a tumour, or dog food crammed in my mouth.”

Easy puts his mug away with a clatter. Aubrey thinks that if it was anyone else here, Lavinia wouldn’t tell, but Easy gave her his clothes, and Aubrey helped her get _The Princess Bride_ off a shelf and didn’t laugh, and now here they all are.

He knows she would never tell Jerusales, but wonders if she’d tell Regina.

“Anyway,” she says, clearly uncomfortable. “It’s because they feed us meat for dinner, and it takes so long to digest, I’m sure.”

Easy’s expression says that he doesn’t believe it but he lets it go, which is unlike him, or maybe exactly like him, Aubrey doesn’t know anymore.

“Well, that was nasty,” Lavinia says once she’s done with her tea. “Let’s never drink it again, shall we.”

“We shall _not_ ,” Easy protests, overturning his empty mug and catching the one stray drop of liquid that falls off the brim with his tongue. “The recipe needs to be modified, is all.”

“There’s no recipe,” Aubrey reminds him and gathers their mugs to wash. “We only added butter, nothing more.”

“Quitters are losers,” Easy proclaims, and Aubrey goes to the sink and washes the mugs, glad to have his back to them for a moment. He’s been thinking about it, how Easy heard Jerry wax poetic about some special beverage of her father’s, and couldn’t sleep until he proved to the world that he, too, could have it. He’s been thinking about the ‘recipe’ too, how, next time, he’ll get a blender from somewhere and make that butter tea properly, trying samples until it’s good enough and then he’ll – he’ll ask someone to give it to Easy. Maybe Regina, because she wouldn’t tell Easy it had been Aubrey if Aubrey asked her not to.

“We should head back,” Lavinia says, shivering in her chair. Aubrey feels too embarrassed to offer her his bathrobe and hopes she’ll ask for it herself, but it doesn’t even seem to occur to her. On the way back, their footsteps are soft, all of them in socks, and Aubrey is almost relaxed despite what they’re doing, at least until Easy stops dead in his tracks, so suddenly that Aubrey bumps into him.

“That door,” Easy says slowly, “was closed.”

They all turn around to stare at the ajar library door they’ve just walked past.

“Maybe Alfie’s inside,” Aubrey whispers, noting that Easy is clutching the hem of his bathrobe’s sleeve and Lavinia its trailing belt. “We should go on.”

“The lights are out though,” Easy says, already walking towards the door. He’s still holding onto Aubrey’s sleeve, and Aubrey doesn’t really want him to let go, so he follows. So does Lavinia.

Inside, the library is quiet and seemingly empty like the aftermath of something, a robbed grave of a place.

“I don’t like this,” Aubrey says, the bookcases that he usually loves for all the hiding spaces in-between them looming and almost hostile in the dark. Easy gives Aubrey’s sleeve a tug that might or might not be intended to reassure and sweeps Quickly’s torch in a wide arch.

“I don’t think anyone’s in here,” he says, not bothering to whisper, “But I think someone _has_ been. Can’t you smell cigarette smoke?”

“You really are like a dog,” Lavinia hisses. “I think we should go back to our rooms. This is really creepy.”

“What if we’re onto something here?” Easy challenges. “Do you want to be stabbed to death in your bed? Think of all the _blood_! They’d never get it out of the floorboards, and it wouldn’t be Regina that they'd keep calling Bloody Mary anymore.”

“I think I have a better chance at getting murdered out in the corridors than in my bed,” Lavinia snaps. “I’m going back.”

“Alright,” Easy says simply. “Godspeed.”

Lavinia stares down at the bathrobe belt she’s still holding and then glances at Aubrey, flushed a bright red. “I’m not going _alone_.”

Easy smirks and leads them forward, between the bookcases, turning the torch this way and that. He has the only source of light, and so they’re forced to follow. Aubrey thinks of Dora Maar, and hopes— No, he won’t even think it.

They’re halfway through the room when they see it in the ray of white light, tomes scattered carelessly on the ground between two bookcases in the section devoted to books on art.

“ _Jesus_ ,” Lavinia hisses. “Why would someone…?”

Easy moves towards the mess before Aubrey can reach for him and at least try and stop him, and, in the end, both he and Lavinia follow, maybe because of that old human instinct of being drawn to wreckage.

“I get it,” Easy says, torch directed at the mess of books still on the shelves. He moves it slowly, revealing a pattern, then goes back and starts over. Someone has collected a bunch of books with black spines and has positioned them in such a way that each one is a line of a letter, some of them supported by others at an angle, beige spines for the background. It all makes up a sentence made out of angular but legible letters.

“‘Thanks for the Monet, Alfie,’” Lavinia reads out slowly, second-long breaks between the syllables, then reads it out again, fluently this time.

Aubrey reads it, too, only in his mind, over and over again, and hates himself for the relief he feels at the fact that the writing doesn’t spell ‘Picasso.’

“Monet,” Easy echoes, and it’s an impossibly small sound in the vast quiet of the room, like throwing a pebble into a lake. “ _Open Sea_.”

He takes off at a run, socks skidding on the slippery floor.

“No,” Aubrey says, Easy gone too fast for him to stand there and imagine things. “No, _wait_!”

He follows, breaking into a run, and so does Lavinia, who won’t be left alone, even though being with them now might mean—

It’s not the library, really, that feels like an empty grave, but the whole school. Aubrey tries to catch up with Easy, slipping on the floor, gripping walls, gripping sculptures, even though he’d promised himself that he would never, gripping the darkness itself because God knows it’s thick enough.

“Well, well!” someone calls out, and Easy stops, startles, drops the torch. It rolls on the ground, the beam lightning somebody’s shoes. “And we meet again! So that’s why the bed was empty, huh?”

They’re near the first-floor staircase, halfway to the steps, and so is the man, only on its other side. Aubrey stares over the balustrade, at the front door, left ajar, that draught tickling his ankles again. The man has a lit cigarette dangling from his mouth and a rectangle shape stuck under his arm, clearly on his way out.

“I remember you,” Easy says when Aubrey and Lavinia crowd around him. “You said you’d be here in _August_.”

Aubrey takes a good look at the man in the torchlight and almost takes a step back when he sees his face, a landscape of crisscrossing lines, scars splintering it into a patchwork of so many mismatched pieces that, for a moment, Aubrey can’t help but wonder if the man is a Picasso character escaped from a painting himself. It might be nonsense, but nonsense is what night feeds to people like breadcrumbs to pigeons, and even Aubrey is not immune, never mind that he should know better.

“I never said I’d be here in _August_ ,” the man says, faking innocent surprise. His voice sounds like something sharp and unoiled, dragging along skin. “I was only introducing myself.”

“August is not a name,” Easy protests.

“Neither is December,” the man says, raising his eyebrows, and, more than anything, Aubrey wishes they could all go back to their rooms, fall asleep, and forget this, let this man straight out of a horror story take the Monet away because it’s only a canvas with a picture on it, except he thinks it’d be like letting the man carry off Easy himself, the grown-up Easy who’s hidden somewhere inside _Open Sea_ , skipping stones, toes buried in sand.

“I bet you’re the most boring story on Earth,” Easy tells the man. “Fucking things up because, once, someone fucked up your face.”

“Are _you_ not a boring story then?” the man asks, all curious. “I didn’t know orphans were so ‘in’ now.”

Aubrey wonders if the man has a gun, and feels rather than sees Lavinia shake at his side.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Easy says, so impossibly brave, chin up. “One step and I’ll start yelling so loud that people will come running right away.”

“Oh?” the man says, indulgent. He reaches for the cigarette stuck in his mouth and circles it teasingly near the canvas of _Open Sea_. The biggest ship catches moonlight, and Aubrey thinks of lighthouses bringing sailors to shore, how sometimes it’s death on rocks instead. “Make a sound and I’ll burn through this before anyone so much as opens their eyes.”

Easy stays quiet but his shoulders are so rigid that Aubrey thinks it’ll hurt later, thinks he’ll have to sleep on his stomach.

Nevermind, as long as he’ll get to sleep after this at all.

“H-he might care about the stupid p-painting,” Lavinia stammers, “but I d-don’t! Do what you want, I’m yelling for help an-nyway!”

“ _Don’t_!” Aubrey and Easy yell at the same time. Easy must be thinking of the painting and Aubrey wishes he was too, but it’s just that he knows that people who’d hold the tip of a cigarette to a canvas worth millions cannot be trusted and shouldn’t be crossed. His breath is short and he wonders when it was that Easy made the man’s acquaintance, when the rest of them were so bloody stupid that they let him out of their sights long enough for it to happen.

“Pye, _please_ ,” Easy, who never asks for things, asks. “Please don’t.”

Lavinia stares at the back of Easy’s head with such fury that Aubrey fully expects her to start yelling and damn them all anyway.

“I could ask Father for a different Monet,” she tells him instead in a shaky voice. “A prettier one, any one you want. A Chagall, too, maybe the one I told you he’d bought me, even though he never had, did you guess? I could get you a painting ten times better than this one, Weiss.”

The man smiles and Easy says, “No.”

“What do you mean _no_?” Lavinia says, reaching out to grab Easy by the collar. “You don’t really want to let him escape, do you? Think of what this’ll do to the school if you can’t think of anything else! Think of what this’ll do to your December Graham!”

“I’d say you’re overestimating her if you think this will do anything to her at all,” the man says with a wolfish smile broken in two. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

He takes a few steps towards the stairs, and they let him.

“Do give Alfie my regards!” he calls merrily, returning the cigarette to his lips, which is when Easy jerks forward, collar slipping from Lavinia’s fingers, and Aubrey curses himself for not having caught it himself because he wouldn’t have let go.

Easy runs at the man, such a small thing, Quickly’s socks on his feet, a jumper from Regina trailing to his thighs, the back of his knees all skinny brackets, and Lavinia does yell just then, loud as a banshee, but so what when no one will get here in time anyway?

In the end, when the man leaps over the railing instead of waiting for Easy to barrel into him, it’s a relief. Aubrey and Lavinia both rush towards it, and Aubrey expects a spread-out silhouette, a fallen angel shape on the ground and a spill of blood spreading around it, but the man has landed in a crouch and gotten to his feet, the painting still secured under his arm.

He salutes, walking backwards, and his smile is— Obnoxiously gleeful.

“Maybe next time!” he calls to Easy, and Aubrey won’t make the same mistake twice. He grabs Easy’s collar because he can’t be sure if Easy won’t leap over the balustrade himself otherwise.

*

When they find them, they’re still huddled there, watching the front door of the school, left gaping open like a mouth. Lavinia is shivering, her trousers soaked with pee, Aubrey’s bathrobe over her shoulders. She didn’t ask for it this time either, but she didn’t have to. Easy hasn’t moved an inch, hands curled so tight on the balustrade that Aubrey doesn’t know how he’ll unclench them.

Aubrey is shaking. It must be the cold.

“Whatever happened?” the school matron, Miss Oakley, demands, looking between the three of them with panic all over her face. Aubrey tries to remember the few times she’d bring biscuits for all the students stuck writing essays in the library, or how she encouraged them to keep potted plants in their rooms, tries to remember that she’s strict but kind, but he still wants her fluttering hands away from all of them, even if they smell like candlewax and are a comforting kind of warm. “What in God’s name _happened_?”

She shoos the few brave students drawn downstairs by the screams away, telling them to get back to their dormitories or else, and goes back to needling them, reminding Aubrey of a stubborn mosquito, one he doesn’t have the energy to bat away.

In the end, they’re lucky. December Graham doesn’t stay overnight every day but she’s at Wilgefortis now, and she comes running too, barefoot and in a bathrobe much like Aubrey’s own. She knows not to touch them, or maybe simply doesn’t want to, only asks them questions, more specific than ‘what on Earth happened,’ so specific that Aubrey answers, relieved at the familiarity of language and how this impossible thing can be dressed in Cambridge Dictionary words.

When Aubrey tells her about the Monet, December Graham doesn’t look at Easy, because she’s strong like that.

When he tells her about Alfie, she doesn’t pause before asking another question.

“We need to call the police,” Miss Oakley says once Aubrey’s near done explaining, hands still fluttering anxiously. He wishes she’d settle, and he wishes someone brought Lavinia a change of clothes, and he wishes someone pried Easy’s hands off that balustrade because he’s not strong enough to do it himself. “I’ll go make the call right away.”

“ _No_ ,” December Graham snaps. “No,” she adds more calmly when Miss Oakley startles. “I know these people. I don’t need a bunch of policemen here interviewing the kids and keeping them from sleeping when I know for a fact they won’t catch that man anyway.”

“They won’t?” Lavinia says, chin trembling.

“He will never come back here, honey,” December tells her, no coddling, the same way she’d address an adult if not for the endearment. “Miss Oakley will get you a change of clothes and you can have a bath rather than a shower if you’d like. Miss Oakley, call me Alfred instead, if you will, and then get the girl something clean to wear.”

Once Miss Oakley rushes off, shaking her head, Easy lets go of the balustrade and flexes his fingers.

“So what’s your real name, then?” he asks December Graham, defiant. She meets his stare, and doesn’t say anything. “Forget it,” he mumbles, and then glances at Aubrey. “We have to go back to the library,” he announces. “To check if _Dora Maar au Chat_ is still there.”

Aubrey doesn’t know how he guessed it, that all this time Aubrey has been dying to selfishly check on Dora Maar. Aubrey’s knees don’t exactly buckle under him but he feels a burning sensation inside them, like they _could_.

“Is that really necessary?” December Graham asks calmly.

“ _Yes_ ,” Easy snaps. “It _is_ necessary.”

December Graham continues watching him in silence, and Aubrey has this ridiculous thought that this is what it must be like when children start arguing with their parents, even though he wouldn’t know.

“Alright,” December says easily. “How about we wait for Miss Oakley to collect Lavinia and then I’ll take you two to the library?”

“ _Fine_.”

She does take them there, too, flicks the light on so that the room is all books again, and not just all shapes. Aubrey somehow keeps himself from running towards _Dora Maar au Chat_ , which is still there, and just as fragmented as before, its own kind of whole. He doesn’t tell Easy that he’s sorry about the Monet because he feels it would be too cruel. Instead, he only gives himself ten seconds to stare at Dora Maar before he turns his back on her.

“How about you stay in Aubrey’s dormitory for tonight Easy?” December Graham suggests when she's done locking up the library with her copy of the key. Aubrey thinks that the man called August must have had one, too, and wonders how he got it off Alfred the librarian.

“I’m not ten,” Easy complains, and December Graham smiles at him for the first time that night.

“No,” she agrees, “You’re not.”

*

Kipp and Quickly demand to know what happened but it only takes one tired look from Easy for them to agree to wait for the news till morning.

“You can have my bed,” Aubrey offers once Kipp and Quickly have gone back to sleep, or at least decided to pretend to. “I’ll take the floor. If you want, I can change the sheets.”

“You know that thing mice do?” Easy says and Aubrey stares at him, confused.

“What thing?”

“Never mind,” Easy says. “Can’t we both sleep on the floor?”

Aubrey almost says, but there’s a bed right there.

“Yes,” he says instead, and starts moving the sheets to the ground. “Whatever you want.”

They lie down head to toe and Aubrey covers them up with a blanket, wondering if Kipp will trip over one of them in the morning. They don’t talk for the longest time because Aubrey feels it wouldn’t be very tactful to start asking Easy about the man called August and Easy doesn’t volunteer any information himself, and so it catches Aubrey off guard when Easy speaks at last, because he thought that maybe Easy had fallen asleep.

“I don’t know how to lose things,” he whispers, the words wet-sounding like his breath, and Aubrey closes his eyes, wishes he could close his ears, too.

*

Alfie is tearing at his hair, walking circles in December’s office, hating himself, and she wishes he understood that this is all her fault.

“But why didn’t you ever mention the scars?”

It’s a stupid question. Of course Alfie never mentioned the scars. He’s _Alfie_.

“I didn’t give him the keys,” Alfie says, “but I don’t have them either.”

“You won’t need them anymore anyway.”

He stops pacing at last, stares at her. He’s chalk-white and December remembers him from years ago, how he looked like a photograph taken before it could be in colour, or a faded one anyway.

“ _No_ ,” she says to his thoughts. “No, you’re not _fired_. It’s just that we obviously have to change the locks.”

“Alright,” Alfie says, visibly shaking. “Alright.”

“I should have known,” December says and takes a sip of her tea. After all, there is nothing in the world that’s too urgent to brew some and although Alfie hasn’t touched his, she hopes that the smell will soothe him. “I should have known as soon as you said his name was Dante.”

Alfie straightens, forgets all about self-loathing for a moment.

“Is that his real name, then?”

The tea tastes more bitter than ever before and December smiles.

“Oh no,” she says. “He must have been so bloody _amused_.”

Alfie tilts his head and she remembers how, once, she knew they’d be friends because of the way he’d handle books, not cautiously, not at all, but like every press of his fingertips had to be love. She hates August for having Alfie’s hands all to himself for however long when he doesn’t even deserve to lick the bottom of Alfie’s shoes.

“His name is Yante,” she explains and reaches for the cigarette stub Alfie picked up off the ground after he cycled here, the very tip still lit.

“Yante?” Alfie repeats. “What kind of a name is that?”

“What kind of a name is December?”

“Not your real one,” Alfie says, and it’s not a question.

“No,” she admits. “But you already knew that much.”

“Suspected.”

“Alfie,” December says, crossing the room towards him. She presses her hand to the back of his neck, directing his head to the crook of her shoulder. “How do I put you back together?”

“You don’t,” he says, and it sounds more strangled than she’d like. She rubs soothing circles on his back, knows it won’t do a damn thing. “I’m not fallen apart yet.”

“How do I keep you from falling apart, then,” she specifies.

“Tell me everything,” he says into her shirt. “Tell me everything and let me help _fix_ this.”

“I’m not sure it can be fixed,” she admits, staring at the moon outside. Only a crescent, so much like a sickle, and she remembers January telling her that that’s what Yante was, his harvest tool, sharp and stained with rust or blood, who could tell? “I will tell you everything, though, if you agree to drink your tea.”

Alfie pulls away and dutifully reaches for his cup, staring at her expectantly.

“Good boy,” she says, motioning to one of the chairs in her office. “You might as well take a seat. It’s quite the story, see.”

It’s not about letting him fix anything, not really. It’s that she knows that Yante didn’t need an elaborate seduction to sneak into Wilgefortis, always an expert at picking locks, and why risk Alfie mentioning the scars to her at all? This is not the end of whatever he and January have plotted, and if they’re to wait for the other shoe to drop, Alfie deserves to at least know that they are.

“I do like long stories,” Alfie says sadly. He curls up in the chair and reaches for that cigarette stub with a self-deprecating smile. “Tell away.”

*

“I don’t know how to lose things,” Easy whispers in the dark. “I only know how to not have them in the first place.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> look, if i was reading this story rather than writing it, i'd probably be really disappointed and angry now, so i don't blame you if you are but trust me, i'll fix it. kind of. Also the next chapter might take me up to a week because it's probably going to be extra long and --i owe you that-- it will explain the whole Alfie/(D/Y)ante situation somewhat. 
> 
> But also hey, Note was right! He is an art thief, ha 
> 
> Also a general update, apart from the Alfie chapter, the first year bit will have two more chapters and then we'll finally move on and no other year at Wilgefortis will have such a crazy wordcount. And I'll most definitely split them into parts


	17. deal with the devil -- interlude, winter 2005

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the pawn's first move

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ha, remember how I talked about how many chapters this would have? Apparently I lied because yesterday I remembered the whole Sparrow storyline, oops. Anyway this is not the Alfie explanation chapter I promised but that's coming, too, I swear. Also, this is really short but needed to be included

J Edward Neill, _Atonement_

*

I am the snake and I am the silence,

an animal’s rib picked clean.

~ Alicia Mountain, _Thin Fire_

*

After the first time Sparrow steals a painting for January, January offers him a cigarette.

“And here I thought you’d wine and dine me a bit longer,” Sparrow says, arching an eyebrow. He doesn’t say no to the cigarette. He never says no to cigarettes.

“Don’t feel cheap,” January says with the kind of smile that makes Sparrow wonder about the sharpness of his teeth.

“I don’t,” Sparrow lies, silk-smooth, almost smooth enough to fool January. It’s Sparrow’s new aspiration in life to be able to trick the man, and he relishes it because he doesn’t have that many aspirations left.

The painting was Mary Cassatt’s _Picking Flowers in a Field_ and Sparrow left no trace. It was a one-man job, a test of a sort, and he passed with flying colours, even if he’d allowed himself to stare at the painting for a while before he got around to actually stealing it.

He’d allowed himself many things – he tried one of the biscuits left out on a golden-rimmed plate in the room he broke into – stale but decent, he touched a piano key to check if it’d make a sound – risky but forgivable, and he sat down in an armchair with pink upholstery, imagining everything in the house was his. He swapped a few books on the shelf because it bugged him that Woolf and Hemingway should touch spines, he read the first few paragraphs of an unfinished letter left out on the coffee table, something about the shape of clouds, and he wrote ‘thank you’ in the layer of dust on the mantelpiece with the tip of his gloved finger. 

_Picking Flowers in a Field_ should have reminded him of childhood but didn’t, and he almost felt like he was doing the right thing taking it from that too-spacious room where it didn’t match the purple wall paint.

Not that he cared about doing the right thing, but.

“I’m not going to pay you yet,” January warns, and Sparrow holds smoke in his lungs, thinks, _burn._

“As long as you eventually get me what I want,” he says lazily. “I know what I’ve signed up for.”

“A big boy, are you?” January mocks, and, outside the window, there are swallows.

Sparrow doesn’t think of himself as a boy or as a man. Sometimes, he can’t help but think of himself as a thing, something tossed aside like a faulty doll someone grew bored of.

He stares at _Judith Beheading Holofernes_ and wishes he could be inside the painting instead of in January’s office, watching it happen but unable to smell the blood.

“What’s next?” Sparrow asks, putting his cigarette in the ashtray. He watches the red tip, and his hands are shaking, but he hasn’t burnt himself, even though he wanted to.

January sees his hands shake but Sparrow hasn’t burnt himself, hasn’t pressed the hot tip of the cigarette to the inside of his wrist, and that’s all that matters.

“Introductions,” January says, watching him with something that could almost be curiosity on someone else’s face. “Introductions and teamwork.”

He laughs at the face Sparrow makes. “I think there’s a good chance you’ll like at least one-third of them.”

“If I try and like all of them, will you consider my offer?” Sparrow says, flashing a charming smile. January is, of course, immune to charm, but Sparrow suspects he still appreciates it on some -- maybe purely aesthetic -- level.

Here’s something that’s not relevant enough for Sparrow to ever speak about: he hates January with every fibre of his being.

“I’ve already considered it,” January says, amused. “Bring your friend to the meeting and better think of some ridiculous little bird name for him, or else I will.”

Sparrow shoves his hands into the pockets of his coat, gives the cigarette one last look, and leaves without saying goodbye. Somewhere, a rich prick is realising that the wall in his living room shouldn’t be empty, and serves him right for reading so much Hemingway.

*

“He said yes,” Sparrow says after picking the lock to the apartment he and Lei have been sharing for the past three days. They haven’t made a copy of the key yet so whenever Lei has it, Sparrow breaks in.

“I wish you’d stop doing that,” Lei says, looking up from the instant mushroom soup he’s eating out of a glass since they don’t have any mugs yet.

“And I wish I was suicidal, but we can’t all have what we want,” Sparrow mumbles, throwing his coat over the back of the sole chair they have, wobbly enough that he’s considering converting it into a bedside table anyway. “If you want me to stop breaking in, install a better lock.”

“That’s not how it works, and I’m sure a better lock wouldn’t stop you anyway,” Lei says, stretching his leg in an effort to trip Sparrow up. They first met in a blind alley and Lei tried it then, too, hoping to mug Sparrow or something like that, only he didn’t succeed. He’s been trying it on Sparrow ever since but so far, no luck. “You actually mean that, don’t you? You do wish you were suicidal. You think it’d be _easier_.”

Sparrow ignores him, and Lei shrugs, used to it by now. They work like clockwork, him and Lei, sometimes there’s a hitch, sometimes there’s need for oil, but mostly it’s mechanical routine with very few surprises. Nothing like the beginning when Lei had a can opener but no cans to eat out of, a holey sleeping bag hid behind loose bricks, and a permanent scowl on his bruise of a face. A child of illegal immigrants escaped from a fire, and they didn't get along at first because Sparrow was too much of an arsonist for Lei’s tastes, and Lei was too much of a person for Sparrow’s.

“So do I get a ridiculous codename too?” Lei asks through a mouthful of soup. “I wouldn’t say no to Raven or Heron or something like that. Ibis sounds cool, too.”

“Too pretentious,” Sparrow says, changing his shirt the only way he ever does it in front of Lei, slipping a fresh one over the one he’s already wearing and then tugging the latter off through the other’s neckline. “I was thinking Rooster. Penguin, maybe? Plover, even.”

Lei throws a pillow his way and the only reason why Sparrow lets it hit him instead of sidestepping it is that he’s already a bad enough friend as it is. The least he can do is occasionally let Lei laugh at his expense.

“Would it kill you to smile?” Lei teases when Sparrow makes a face at him. “Who hurt you?”

Sparrow sighs, and steals the pillow for himself because it’s the only one they have.

Who _hurt_ him? Who _didn’t_?


	18. anticlockwise, november 1998 -- april 1999

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> an almost-relationship

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is, the 'explanation chapter' that I really shouldn't refer to as such because it doesn't actually explain all that much. It's Yante's pov but it doesn't reveal too much information because I'm saving that for much later. I'll talk more about that in the notes below. A warning of a sort: this is about a mostly horrible person, includes very unhealthy behaviors, and also doesn't ever get explicit but theirs is a pretty physical relationship and it's referenced probably too many times throughout the chapter. 
> 
> I don't even know I need sleep
> 
> Also, I think I mentioned Aubrey wearing glasses two chapters ago. He doesn't. He will. I definitely need to reread everything I've written so far and make notes, oops

René Magritte, _The False Mirror_

*

You’re what the autumn knew would happen

after the last collapse

of primary color

~Adrienne Rich, _November 1968_

*

It’s a November evening when Yante watches December Graham through a pair of binoculars. The air is crisp, like something that would break between his teeth if he could bite it, and he’s been standing on top of the wall circling December’s little theatre of a school for the better part of the day.

He’s not a patient man, not at all, but when January wants him to, he can keep still, and _of course_ January wants him to. Yante’s here to watch his little bird of an escaped never-wife and January will expect Yante to report back to him, truth wrapped in lies or maybe the other way around, fuck knows. He’ll want to hear about December being miserable but must know that he won’t because just look at her, feet up on her desk and that familiar wrinkle of determination between her eyebrows— December doesn’t _get_ miserable and that’s why January hates her instead of loving her, how he’d like to break her and see her broken, putting herself in his hands, but how instead she puts herself in her own hands, only, oh-oh, not exactly, because is that a bruise Yante spies on her wrist?

He smiles.

Yante’s met December a handful of times but they were never ‘close.’ She kissed him once, to piss January off, and he kissed her once, too, also to piss January off, and then he kissed her again, just to piss _her_ off. She tried returning the favour at some point but there was nothing irritating about it even though she gave it her best, biting his lip to blood and spitting later and all that.

Yante doesn’t think December has kissed anyone and meant it in years, and he grins because oh, she gets it at last. He used to send paper planes her way and she would catch them mid-flight without so much as glancing at them as if she could hear the swish of paper, and wouldn’t falter – would go on and on about how Monet had painted the Rouen Cathedral over thirty times and about what it meant for the world, no matter how many times Yante had told her that it meant nothing.

January went through a very dramatic five stages of grief when December left – which, really, he should have seen it coming – and then got all happy after a few months, said that December didn’t know it but her cage wasn’t behind her at all, it was simply bigger than she’d expected and he still had the key, had swallowed it, too.

He would draw her back and she would regret all her sins, he said, even though by then he was already supposed to be too smart to believe in sin.

December says something and a man enters her office, a wobbly stack of books in his arms. Another teacher, Yante thinks at first, only it’s a lie because what he thinks first is, _a ghost._ He expects the man to leave after exchanging a few sentences with December, but he lingers, and Yante hopes it’s some unrequited puppy crush because he’s not in the mood to watch the two of them undress each other. He’d have to tell January all about that, too. January would throw a stapler again and Yante would have to risk angering him further by getting out of its way in time.

No sex after all, thank the Devil. The man half-seats on December’s desk and talks about something, all animated, a bean sprout of a thing, too-big-jumper and bony hands. Yante counts his knuckles through the binoculars just to have something to do and thinks, hmmm.

“I want to make it a game,” he tells January a few days later, after a week of mostly uneventful observation. “It’s too boring otherwise.”

January lets him talk, which is rare enough.

“She has a _friend_ ,” Yante says, making sure to sound mocking. Friends are in _Winnie-The-Pooh_ and anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional, which is why December hasn’t been thinking clearly for years now. “You won’t break little D, you know, but that guy looks easy enough to fuck up.”

“Is that necessary?”

January, somehow, still prefers purpose over meaningless cruelty. Something about the waste of resources and him being a boring bore, blah blah blah. Yante leans forward to steal his cigarette, and January lets him.

“No, not _strictly_ necessary,” Yante admits, taking a drag of the cigarette, and oh, life has few pleasures, but. “It could come useful in the future, though. And we both know this will piss little D more than anything I could try and do to _her_.”

January considers it.

“She’s not allowed friends,” he says at last, as good as it gets in terms of a go-ahead, and Yante stifles a laugh. December is allowed whatever she wants, January’s approval or not, and she’s not the only delusional one. Yante too thinks that people are toys but at least he doesn’t think they’re _possessions_.

*

He could break into Wilgefortis with his eyes closed but he takes his sweet time playing careful instead.

Alfie Rose, when Yante meets him at last, is a strange mixture of bashful and prickly and sounds like something worn smooth. He’s all faded, like someone has stolen his colours, and Yante grins at the thought because he’ll be stolen from still. He drinks Alfie’s coffee, he takes his copy of _The Waves_ , and he licks foamed milk that isn’t really there off the corner of Alfie’s mouth.

Alfie doesn’t taste alive and there’s something good about that, something Yante doesn’t understand wanting but wants, how maybe he could kiss alive into him and then take it away.

He leaves but doesn’t, stays in a blind alley opposite the road and watches at an angle. Alfie sits dumbstruck, staring into space for the longest time, and then starts grading essays, pen shaking in his hand. After a minute, he puts it away, covers his face with his palms, and sits there for another hour.

When he leaves at last, he doesn’t watch where he’s going, clearly distracted, but he doesn’t trip on any of the wobbly cobblestones either.

*

The first time he sleeps with Alfie is after Norfolk, and Alfie’s skin is too soft for his own good. Yante barely touches him and Alfie flinches away as if burnt, Yante grips him hard, fingers digging in close to bone, and Alfie doesn’t even blink. It’s a strange contrast and one Yante didn’t expect. Usually, it’s either-or.

Interesting, Yante thinks when he bites Alfie’s shoulder almost to blood and Alfie hisses and cards his fingers through Yante’s hair in a soothing manner, as if it’s Yante who needs calming down. It’s not welcome but Yante welcomes it anyway and soon learns that if he doesn’t hold on to Alfie tight, his fingers will slide right off.

He gets it halfway through, how Alfie is the gentlest thing Yante has ever had in his hands, not used to gentleness himself, and what a shame. Yante isn’t in the habit of offering kindness – wouldn’t know how to, either – but he thinks that maybe that’s for the best because he has the feeling that Alfie wouldn’t know how to accept it anyway.

Yes, just as well.

Yante enjoys making Alfie’s skin flush at least, thinks, not so dead after all. Later, he reaches for one of the National Geographic issues stacked under Alfie’s bed, which he can easily see because they never made it farther than Alfie’s ugly carpet.

“Usually people keep porn in places like that,” he teases, flipping through the issue. It’s dated, a decade old. “ _Amazing Otters_ ,” he laughs at the title.

“Otters _are_ amazing,” Alfie insists without opening his eyes. The room is cosy, the radiator hot to the touch, and when Alfie shivers, Yante doubts it’s from cold. Still, he reaches for a blanket and covers Alfie with it, pretending to be kind.

“ _Three sea otters rock gently in the water_ ,” he reads, amused, and Alfie doesn’t exactly cuddle him but twists himself onto his side and snuggles up close.

“Yes,” he says, eyes still closed. “You can read it to me.”

“Really?” Yante teases. “I can?”

“Shut up,” Alfie says tiredly. “I’ll make you breakfast in the morning if you behave.”

So he’s staying till morning, then.

“Which is it, ‘read to me’ or ‘shut up’? You have to decide, Mr. Librarian.”

“Both,” Alfie insists, like a child.

“How greedy,” Yante says but complies, flips the pages until he finds a picture he thinks Alfie would like, were he to open his eyes. “ _As she floats, a sea otter mother holds her baby tightly. The baby is called a pup. Most of the time, sea otters give birth in the water in a bed of kelp_.”

“You don’t have the right voice for _Amazing Otters_ ,” Alfie mumbles sleepily. “Too rough, like you’d kill one if you saw one.”

Nonetheless, he taps Yante on the arm to urge him to go on.

“ _Waves moving the kelp up and down rock the pup to sleep_ ,” Yante continues, trying to narrate the way David Attenborough would, with this disgustingly British fondness. “ _Some people call the kelp ‘a sea otter’s cradle.’ You can almost hear this mother hum ‘Rock-a-bye, Baby_.’”

Yante snorts and when Alfie doesn’t, he glances at him only to find him fast asleep. He puts the magazine away and watches Alfie breathe with his mouth tilted open. Suddenly, he remembers how, back when he was small, always scraped knees and tripping on empty beer bottles, other kids used to say that everyone would eat spiders at night. “You sleep with your mouth open and that’s as good as an invitation for them,” stuff like that, and Yante hated the idea, not because of the supposed spider consumption but because of how involuntary it would be. He wouldn’t mind eating spiders by handfuls if he had any say in the matter; it wasn’t a horrifying idea so much as an unthinkable one, being just another dumb doll of a person, mouth tilted open and vulnerable and he none the wiser.

Now, he doesn’t care because nothing’s worth caring about and not in a nihilistic way either.

He’s tempted to leave but stays for their little theatre’s sake, smoking through the night, Alfie so innocent next to him that Yante can already imagine how much ruining him will ruin December. January better get him something fancy for his birthday once this is all over, never mind that Yante doesn’t celebrate it because hey, he won’t say no to alcohol. One of those fancy wines January stores in a basement somewhere, maybe, spoiling them delicious, and Yante imagines uncorking it already, all red spill of triumph.

Alfie’s hair smells like Norfolk and he looks so cold that Yante covers him with an extra blanket, not because he cares, but because once he wakes up warm, Alfie will.

He’s got him, hook, line, and sinker, and fishing has never been this exciting before.

*

Yante spends a lot of time breaking into Alfie’s apartment when Alfie’s not there and inspecting everything inside. He’s not looking for clues on how to woo Alfie because Alfie has been head over heels for him ever since that first stolen coffee, and he doesn’t try gaslighting him either, no swapped books on his shelves, no swapped forks and knives in his cutlery compartments. He inspects Alfie’s belongings purely for his own entertainment, not surprised in the slightest when he doesn’t find condoms anywhere and only a little surprised when he finds six different editions of _Antigone_. On the first page of the oldest copy, Alfie has scrawled in by-now faded pencil: _Antigone = “worthy of one’s parents”_ and below that: _she was, more than,_ the letters angrier than what Yante’s seen of Alfie’s handwriting so far.

Yante lets himself entertain the thought that Alfie might be interesting for a moment, not just toy-interesting but interesting enough to explain why someone like December would associate with him, this strange man who’ll only break if you treat him like an egg and who therefore has to be treated like he isn’t one, even though he _is_. Yante tests things sometimes, threatens to tighten his fingers on Alfie’s neck until Alfie hisses, _don’t_ , digs his fingers into the hollows between Alfie’s ribs until Alfie hisses a _please, do_. It’s a map of a sort, only Yante has long crumpled it and tossed it away rather than try and memorise it, because it’s the kind of a map that gets outdated every week. He can never be sure what Alfie will expect from him and so sometimes it’s all gentleness, and sometimes it’s all near-violence, and sometimes it’s watching _Casablanca_ three times in a row with a careful three-foot distance between them.

Despite appearances, books are not Alfie’s only possessions. He has an honest-to-God harmonica in a shoebox shoved to the back of his wardrobe that he insists he can play but refused to touch when Yante admitted to having found it, he has a goofy tie, black with geese mid-flight printed all over it, and he has a whole bag of fake tropical flowers. He has a Monopoly game with a sack full of Scrabble tiles inside the box, too, for some strange variation of the game that Alfie thought of himself where you put words instead of houses once you’ve placed your piece on a yet to be sold property, more letters at your disposal than in an actual Scrabble game, and try to form a sentence with all your words, points to be calculated for each player once there are no properties left.

(They play it one evening and Alfie is so good at words that Yante doesn’t even have to pretend to lose, and he wouldn’t either because he’s learning that thinking Alfie nothing but sweet taffy is a quite ignorant underestimation.)

Yante makes himself coffee and pretends he lives in Alfie’s flat, gets bored of it after half an hour and reads one of the _Antigone_ editions in reversed order, from the last scene to the very first, laughing at Alfie’s comments and leaving his own next to them, wondering how many weeks/months/years it’ll take for Alfie to discover them and if they’ll make him mad once he does.

*

There’s an underlined quote in Alfie’s copy of _The Waves_ that Yante despises, _I furbish him up and make him concrete._

*

Alfie is finite and self-contained, he’s a body and not a ghost after all, and there are only so many untouched places where Yante can still put his hands. Soon enough, it becomes all about order, different variations of the same pathetic human thing. Alfie talks about it once, says it’s like playing the piano, always the same set of keys but an infinite number of music pieces, and then it’s not about sex anymore but all about Chopin and how “there has never existed anything sadder than his music,” which makes Yante think, _just you wait._

“His heart is buried in Warsaw, you know,” Alfie tells him. “It was allowed to survive the uprising in ’45, and few other things were.”

“Where’s _your_ heart buried then, little librarian?” Yante breathes into Alfie’s neck, and he expects a snort and a sarcastic reminder about Alfie being very much alive.

He gets the truth instead.

“Birmingham, maybe,” Alfie says, thoughtful. “Only ‘buried’ is not the right word for it. See, my heart didn’t deserve a burial.”

He doesn’t sound bitter, or even worn, only matter-of-fact, and Yante remembers those angry letters pressed into that oldest _Antigone_ edition, thinks of how they must have been so much darker once, and how they’re all faded now.

“Care to elaborate?” Yante encourages and nips at a spot near Alfie’s Adam’s apple that he’s circled back to four times already. It’s his favourite, fragile bones so close beneath the bit of skin that he could scrape his teeth against them if he tried. He _did_ try, and Alfie liked it, too. 

“Not particularly, no,” Alfie manages, pressing his finger to Yante’s mouth. Yante instinctively catches it between his teeth, and they already did this once before, watching each other, Yante biting harder and harder, Alfie refusing to take his finger back and refusing to blink, a statement of a sort, a _I’ve been through things, too._

This time Yante doesn’t make it a game because he already knows this about Alfie. January has done extensive research on Alfred Rose and so Yante knows all about the few years Alfie spent on the streets, even though he still can’t quite believe it. Not _Alfie_ , who’s clumsy, and flushes over the most stupid of things, and stutters whenever he cares too much about making a point.

Yante follows him sometimes, and for all Alfie’s obliviousness, Yante thinks that half the time Alfie _knows_. He never stops in the middle of the street and never glances over his shoulder, which either means that he’s none the wiser or that he’s too smart to do so. On the coldest of nights – and there are many of those this particular winter – Alfie goes grocery shopping and packs food into plastic bags, carries them around the town and hands them to slumped shapes that look like trash put out for collection but are the homeless, wrapped in their sleeping bags, missing teeth, and calling Alfie by his name.

Somehow, Yante knows that this is not why December keeps him around.

*

He’s staying in a cramped hostel room and the few people that see him there on the rare occasions when he’s in always stare at his scars but never ask.

*

“If you had Chopin’s heart in your hands,” Yante says one day, taking a seat opposite Alfie at his kitchen table, “what would you do with it?”

He kicks his legs up on the table, which only ever amuses Alfie rather than irritates him. He got all offended the first three times Yante did it but by now he’s learned to act like it’s his choice to indulge it.

“Chopin’s _beating_ heart?”

“Sure,” Yante agrees. “Chopin’s _beating_ heart.”

“How very Edgar Allan Poe.”

“I’m not saying you _killed_ the guy.”

“No,” Alfie says, still amused. “That would be tuberculosis.”

“Does it beat Chopin’s mazurki?”

“It pumps blood,” Alfie says, staring at the dirt that fell off the soles of Yante’s shoes and onto the table with a somewhat foolish smile. “Or I suppose it doesn’t, since it’s in my hands.”

He cups them too, like he’s imagining the heart there, heavy and wet. Yante stares.

“Did you think me some hopeless romantic?” Alfie says, delighted. “A heart is just an organ.”

“But you _are_ a hopeless romantic,” Yante points out and takes his feet off the table, leans towards Alfie until he can smell him.

“When Vita Sackville-West wrote Virginia Woolf that her letter to her was just a squeal of pain, that was her mind talking, not her heart,” Alfie says, and trust him to make everything about Virginia. It’s so predictable that it almost makes Yante smile, even though predictable things never do.

“So what you left behind in Birmingham was not your heart, then, but your brain?” he teases, and thinks that it’s a funny sort of luck, how he'll get to break Alfie’s heart – _mind_ – of all people’s.

“No,” Alfie says with a small smile, something private and polite about it. “I like to think I took that with me.”

Later, his skin tastes like the midlands and Yante understands him well enough to do him the courtesy of trying to kiss it away until he’s all ocean instead.

*

January grins when Yante mimics a flying bird with one hand and snatching it in his fist with the other.

*

The next time they never make it to Alfie’s bed, the issue of National Geographic Yante blindly fumbles for is only one year old and thick enough to be more of a book than anything else, at over three hundred pages. It’s titled _Wildlife Watching_ and Alfie only needs to make an incoherent noise for Yante to start reading from it. He picks an entry on Phantom Canyon Preserve, fuck-knows-where in the U.S. of A., and Alfie’s sleepy enough to mumble something about _The Phantom of the Opera,_ of all things, and actually bury his nose in Yante’s sweaty shoulder. Yante reads about hawks and kestrels even after Alfie has fallen asleep, telling himself that it’s for his own entertainment, and then spends far too long staring at Alfie’s open, vulnerable mouth.

Spiders don’t actually crawl down people’s throats, he knows that now, but if they did, they’d all sense Alfie an easy target for sure.

*

Sometimes, Yante can smell Alfie’s books and skin on his hands long after he’s left Alfie’s flat, and every now and then he lets it be instead of smoking cigarettes until the scent goes away.

*

January wants him to steal the Monet because December got _Open Sea_ mere days after never bothering to reply to the only letter January ever sent her. It’s just a seascape, and one of Monet’s weaker ones, too, not that Yante should be the judge of that, but for January it’s an open mockery of his wounded pride instead, and he’s been waiting to take it away from December for years, spoiling himself rotten with the thoughts of the sweet inevitability of it.

Alfie tells him all about it on a quiet night, the moon half-hidden by clouds like an eye peeking shyly through fingers, and Yante stops biting his ear to listen. An orphan boy, boohoo, and December ever so kind (hilarious, that), gifting the bloody thing to him just like that and oh, January won’t like that at all.

Later, Yante tells him anyway.

“December and her orphans,” January scoffs. They’ve read the papers, they know all about it, and who doesn’t? That’s where it went wrong with December: all of them trying to outrun their pathetic disasters of past selves, and her hesitating and then going back for hers, extending her hand to her own faulty self. When you had a shitty past, you’re supposed to either leave it behind or use it to your advantage, milk it but not like that, not by cradling it fondly like you wouldn’t change a thing.

January never locked her up in his attic but not because she’s not crazy enough for it, only because December never was and never will be one to let anyone lock her up.

“You could kill the kid in his sleep and make it look like an accident,” January says, and it’s interesting enough for Yante to look his way and stop trying to fold a tissue into a fox for a second.

“I could,” he says slowly, intrigued.

“You won’t,” January decides. 

“I won’t,” Yante agrees easily and thinks that January might be nothing like December but that there’s still quite the gulf between giving your fucked-up past a hug and shooting it in the chest.

*

One week before the Monet, Yante makes Alfie spaghetti. He grates cheese, and thinks, a false sense of safety, except he’s sure that, all this time, Alfie hasn’t felt safe at all and kept deciding to have Yante anyway.

Recently, after one mess of a “hasn’t it occurred to you that I might _want_ to touch you” comment, everything has been an argument of hands, who’ll get to touch who first, like trying to make a point. Alfie is the sort of stubborn Yante’s only seen in mothers, shoving food down their children’s throats in spite of the puke stains all over their work shirts, and whatever Alfie’s trying to prove to him, he’s not going to let it go.

Well, not until the Monet anyway.

They’re a disaster and perhaps that’s why Yante has come to like this more than he ever expected to. Once, he was lucky enough to find himself inside a derailed train and he still remembers the wonderful thrill of everything shaking like the end of the world and how the blood that came off his forehead was warm and more red than anything he’d seen in years.

“Was it meant to be this spicy?” Alfie says after clearing his plate, unbothered.

Yante grins at him.“ _Yes_.”

*

The last time he reads to Alfie from a National Geographic issue, it’s the bibliography, because he’s come to understand that it’s all about the sound of his voice and not about the words.

He reads himself hoarse and Alfie sleeps still and untroubled the way only children do, like he might be dead, and Yante doesn’t try to wake him to check that he isn’t.

*

They know all about little Ezra Weiss, of course, the orphanage he spent the last few years in, the one before that, his sob story of a family background.

They could know his favourite soup, too, if it was relevant, but it isn’t.

(Alfie likes chicken soup and eats it with too much parsley.)

When Yante takes the painting off Ezra Weiss’s wall, the kid isn’t even there, and he wonders if Alfie will say yes when Yante asks him for something months from now.

Stealing the Monet is the easy part but what he really hopes he’s carrying off is all of Alfie’s ‘no’s.

*

He thinks that December would reply to January’s letter now, after all these years, all threats, except it’s too little too late, she wouldn’t know how to reach him now.

Yante hangs around for a while and watches Alfie through his binoculars, can even see the not-yet-faded bruises he bit into his neck the last time they slept with each other, a sickle shape. Alfie spends too many shifts re-shelving books in that library of his and doesn’t fall apart the way Yante almost expected him to. His stapling is angry and he’s reckless with himself, letting his elbows and hips bump into furniture somewhat deliberately, not his usual absent-mindedness but a sort of furious self-punishment, but he doesn’t cry and he doesn’t call in sick.

Once, he stops sorting his papers and glances out the window, eyes—

Not on Yante, not that, not with the cover of the trees, except that’s what it feels like, like they’re watching each other.

Yante knows he’s not visible and waves anyway. Alfie doesn’t wave back but he doesn’t blink either, and who knows?

*

“Hook, line, and sinker, indeed,” January says, staring at _Open Sea_ with obscene satisfaction. “I could burn it if I wanted.”

He flicks a lighter and Yante smiles.

“You don’t want to,” he reminds January. “Too early for that, no?”

“You think?”

“You’re the patient one,” Yante says lightly, and doesn’t mention that sometimes doing nothing but watching a mouse trap doesn’t make you careful, only mad.

*

He never returns Alfie’s copy of _The Waves_ but he does buy him a new one, maybe to mess with him, maybe not. He breaks into Alfie’s flat easily, even though Alfie’s changed the locks, and doesn’t do any of the things he was always tempted to do now either, doesn’t swap books on shelves, doesn’t draw back the curtains, doesn’t flick the light on.

Doesn’t smell Alfie’s pillow because why would he?

(Not _yet_.)

He leaves the book between Alfie’s copies of _Orlando_ and _Mrs. Dalloway_ and then checks the time on the clock on Alfie’s wall. It’s always late by three minutes and Yante’s train is in half an hour.

He thinks Alfie might burn the book once he sees it but he doesn’t hang around long enough to see for sure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, the National Geographic article about otters and rock-a-bye is an actual thing. I looked through those on openlibrary.org because who can say no to otters (highly recommend openlibrary, btw, if you don't mind reading scanned books, they have lots of stuff, especially older books that are normally not available in e-form). The thing I most love about writing this story is that the research for it (or the parts of it that I actually bother with anyway) is super interesting :,) ALSO oh my god, I had to shamelessly reference Vita and Virginia's letters because those two, I swear. Every time I start doubting romance I remember Vita and Virginia and it fixes everything <3
> 
> As for Alfie and Yante, first of all, everything that happened in this chapter? it probably meant something but not necessarily. Sometimes you guys say that I say things between the lines/imply/all that and the thing is, I do try to do that but what's so fun about it is that sometimes I myself don't know what exactly it is I'm leaving unsaid and with these two that was very much the case. Tbh, if you're not sold on this relationship, I don't blame you because as of now I'm not either. But this wasn't their romance, this was their... pre-... many things. I'll try to fix it because I want to prove to myself that I can fix it but yeah. Also, Alfie's chapters will be much less frequent for the remaining school years; they'll still be there but rare. There'll be more once the kids grow up, I promise that much but now he'll have a bit of a rest. 
> 
> Now, if you actually got this far (I'm sorry for being rambly) this will have 2-3 more chapters and that would be the end of part 1 so bearing in mind that those next few chapters won't include any more mature themes than the story has covered so far, do you think I should rate part 1 teen and up audiences once I split it? I'm sorry, you can ignore me, but I'm just so shit at rating stuff, I never know if it's just about sexual content or if someone's going to yell at me for rating codependent behavior and obsessive relationships teen and up audiences and traumatising children (i know that this story is probably far from traumatising but better be safe than sorry???).


	19. so long, june 1999

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a few goodbyes and a promise of many hellos

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it occured to me, while i was writing this chapter, that it might come as a surprise that this jumped from april to summer but... well. But hey, 1,5 more chapters (1 summer chapter and 1 extra extra short interlude that doesn't count) and we're on to year 2 which will have: theatre drama (Shakespeare! Shakespeare! Shakespeare!), weird initiation ceremonies, attempts at seducing people for revenge and puberty. 
> 
> (Also, I've been binging Shakespeare's plays and am pretty obsessed so sorry in advance for all the references to his works this will no doubt have. I always meant for Jerusalem's diary entry about her doing theatre from second year onwards to be more than just her being dramatic (ha) but I never meant to become this obsessed with the idea and also now pretty much all of them will be doing theatre, oops) 
> 
> Guys, this was such a crazy week, all mental breakdowns and frankly, I've read so many great one-shots that I'm frustrated with pretty much everything I've ever written for not being good enough (and christ but I wish English could just be instinctive and not like blindly groping for words in the dark when, at this point, Polish isn't all that instinctive either) but honestly, this isn't the best chapter so sorry in advance and please let me know if there are any glaring mistakes <3
> 
> Also, I spent half of last week researching elitism in uk private boarding schools and.... okay, so this story was always meant to be eventually critical of said establishments and at some point i have to start talking about this: it will include some severe bullying. Not slugs-in-shoes and not head-in-the-toilet either. At some point I'll try including trigger warnings for it but anyway, please know that the kind of angsty this will get is,, a serious level of angsty. The idea for this story, long before I decided to try and write it, back when I was content to only have it in my head, was born from stories of the kind of things that went on in a boarding school I almost went to, that my close friend actually went to, and that my brother later wanted to go too (not in the uk and not private but elitist anyway). This has only been a story about art theft for three months but it's always been a story about how horrible those places can be. Anyway, I'll talk more about this eventually. I'm aware that as of now this story probably reads almost Hogwartsy but nostalgia is not exactly what I will be going for with the setting.
> 
> ALSO, this isn't the platform for this but I'll put it here anyway in case someone is looking for this type of sources because I myself found it very useful: **https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/** ,,,

Helen Lundeberg, _The Veil_

*

We have some history together that hasn’t happened yet

~ Jennifer Egan, _A Visit from the Goon Squad_

*

In the months after the theft, Aubrey thinks about that time Easy tried to keep himself from liking Chagall a lot.

 _I can never have anything_ , he said, _and so it’s better not to want anything in the first place._

Spring is all flowers and pollen, and Easy is at his most quiet, insults barely loud enough to be heard, something half-hearted about his hate for the world now, like it’s turned mild dislike.

“Sometimes I forget that the painting’s not there,” Easy confesses to Aubrey once, when Aubrey is proofreading his paper for him. There are hardly any mistakes in it, hardly anything that would warrant marking it red, and there’s something bittersweet about that. “I wake up and I see it there on the wall, until I don’t.”

Aubrey never tries to make Easy feel better about it. He’s not arrogant enough to believe that anything he’d say ever could and he feels a fair share of guilt besides. Never mind that the Monet’s theft wasn’t his fault, _it was still his fault._ He thinks that man, August, must have dropped the guilt, unwanted, and it must have gotten stuck to Aubrey’s shoe, impossible to shake off, second-hand and worn but there.

 _You can love art without having it_ , Aubrey had said and so it’s his fault. _You can love it without having to lose it_ , and it had been a lie.

*

“I can’t believe this is it,” Jerusalem says, sprawled across their library table in a very territorial manner. Aubrey has already caught a total of four pens before they could roll off it and to the floor after coming into contact with Jerusalem’s untamed, everywhere-hair. “Only one more day. I’m already packed and all.”

“No, you’re not,” Regina points out calmly. She’s finishing knitting something red and pink that looks too warm for spring. There’s something frantic about it, like she’s on a deadline, and she keeps pricking her fingers but doesn’t seem to notice. “Your stockings are still all over.”

“Free decorating,” Jerusalem argues, waving her hand around without raising her head off the table.

“Your _dirty_ stockings.”

“Moulin Rouge style,” Jerusalem says in a sing-song voice.

“I think it would do you well to think before you speak sometimes,” Kipp says, amused. He’s been braiding Jerusalem’s hair into elaborate hairstyles, stealing bits of Regina’s yarn to tie it.

“I _do_ think before I speak,” Jerusalem insists. “This was well-thought-out, I’ll have you know.”

“So you’re not an accidental instigator, then?”

“We’ve known each other since September and you’re only realizing _now_?”

Kipp smiles and tugs at a strand of Jerusalem’s hair stronger than strictly necessary, which earns him a kick to the ankle.

“I can’t believe my parents are coming _all the way here_ to pick me up,” Jerusalem whines. “I want to be on the train too! What’s the point of driving out to England’s nostril itself when they could make it a quick London trip? Mother loves London, too, and always spends half of Father’s cash when we’re there and Father has _a lot_ of cash on him at all times.”

“England’s nostril,” Aubrey repeats, shaking his head. Jerusalem and Easy are spending too much time together.

“Yes, yes, poor you,” Easy grumbles from where he’s sitting cross-legged on the ground for lack of space, folding vaguely pornographic shapes out of ripped-out notebook pages. It’s his maths notes and Aubrey doesn’t think Easy’s grasp of fractions is poor enough to warrant such petty revenge but he wouldn’t put it past him either. “Your _terrible_ parents are coming all the way here to pick you up in their _terrible_ convertible to take you back to your _terrible_ mansion. Boohoo.”

Everyone goes quiet and Aubrey braces himself for whatever scathing retort is coming but Jerusalem only looks up meekly from the table and gives Easy a sheepish smile.

“I’m sorry,” she says in a small voice. “I didn’t mean—”

“ _Joke_ ,” Easy cuts her off. “I might not have parents but it doesn’t mean I _want_ them.”

Aubrey doubts that’s true but everyone relaxes anyway. Well, everyone apart from him. He can’t relax with Easy on the ground and him up on a chair, having to look down to meet his eyes but then, he couldn’t relax were he to join Easy on the floor either. Too much of a statement, even though Quickly’s down there too.

(It _was_ a statement in Quickly’s case, a “no, I’m not scared of sitting down on the floor, Kipp, shut up, people _clean_ here. What do you mean, people _don’t_ clean here? Well, never mind, _watch_ me!”)

“We all have to call each other during the summer,” Jerusalem announces.

“I’m more of a written correspondence kind of guy,” Aubrey says and Jerusalem turns her head to grace him with a pitiful look.

“I know, AA, I’ve heard you talking to your mother on the phone. The poor woman has to try so hard to get something more substantial than a polite report on the weather out of you that I wouldn’t be surprised to learn giving birth to you was easier.”

“Well, now—”

“Worry not, I’m going to written-correspond you _so hard_. You have _no_ idea. We’ll be like a kidnapped noblewoman and the pirate captain holding her hostage, love at first binding, only after the noblewoman has been retrieved by her impotent husband who’s twice her age and has sideburns. Forbidden letters, melancholic reminiscence, and love telepathy. I’ll be the pirate captain, of course.”

“I don’t think I could come up with a less passionate match if I tried,” Kipp says, horrified, and then proceeds to try anyway. “Wet cucumbers and cold butter? Not quite. A shower sponge and shoe polish? Close but not it, either.”

“Hey!” Jerusalem protests vehemently, shooting up so suddenly that another pen starts rolling towards the edge of the table. “I’m plenty passionate!”

“I never said you weren’t,” Kipp says, gently steering her head back to the table’s surface.

Aubrey lowers himself in his chair and pretends not to exist. It doesn’t quite work. After months of having friends, he’s out of practice.

“Oh, right,” Jerusalem mumbles. “Whatever will you do when you fall in love, AA? You can’t just be a block of wood forever.”

It stings a little but Aubrey chooses to ignore it. It probably only further proves Jerusalem’s point, but.

“I suppose I’ll worry about it once I do fall in love.”

“How spontaneous of you!” Kipp teases with a smile that’s half malice, half fondness. “Are you sure you don’t have a plan written out for that eventuality?”

“And plan B,” Regina adds, sending Aubrey an apologetic smile.

“And C, and D, and E, and all the way to Z,” says Easy.

“What’s wrong with always being prepared?” Quickly mumbles, and Aubrey sends him a thankful prayer.

“Just that it’s an impossibility,” Kipp says, thoughtful. “For instance, you’re prepared to see Treasure in class every day but you’re never prepared for how she occasionally smiles at you. Remember that time you almost fell out the window when she waved at you?”

“Or that time you gasped so loud that you tried to stifle it and smacked yourself in the face with a dirty sponge because you forgot you were holding it,” Easy adds, merciless. “You were coughing chalk the whole day after and kept insisting it was tuberculosis.”

“Or that time you tripped over the biology classroom skeleton and put your hands all over its pelvis ‘to catch your balance’,” Jerusalem throws in, gleeful. “Why, it was downright pornographic.”

Quickly blushes and tugs his newsboy cap low, so that it shades his face.

“Lies and slander,” he mumbles. “I just think she’s nice, is all.”

“I think she’s nice, too, and yet I don’t mistake windows for doors whenever she walks into a room,” Kipp laughs. “You should send her a letter over the summer. Quote some Shakespeare, anything but Sonnet 130, and she’ll be eating out of your hand by September.”

“I don’t want her eating out of my hand,” Quickly says, troubled. “That’s unsanitary.”

“Why do you like her so much anyway?” Jerusalem muses. “She looks like a scarecrow.”

Regina shoots her a disapproving look and pokes her with the tip of one of her knitting needles.

“You know nothing about scarecrows!” Quickly bristles with a somewhat misplaced defensiveness.

“Finished!” Aubrey breathes out and slams the cover of the library copy of _Macbeth_ shut. He shakes out his hand and wonders if he’ll be able to hold a pen anytime this week without it hurting.

“What were you doing anyway?” Regina says, tilting her head to read the cover.

“Copying down my favourite parts,” Aubrey says, fanning himself with his notebook. “We don’t have _Macbeth_ at home.”

“For shame,” Jerusalem mocks. “Did you copy the whole thing?”

“No, only about half of it.”

“ _Only about half of it_ ,” she parrots.

Aubrey ignores her and gets up to locate Alfie and return the book. He finds him spread out on his back between two bookcases in the astrology section, surrounded by stacks of paperbacks. When Aubrey approaches him, Alfie cracks one eye open and offers him a sheepish smile.

“Aubrey, hello,” he says. “Will it be more unprofessional if I stay like this or if I desperately scramble to my feet?”

“What’s unprofessional about a librarian surrounded by books?” Aubrey says easily, and Alfie sighs, grateful.

“Done with the _Macbeth_?”

“Just on time.”

“I hate _Macbeth_ now, you know,” Alfie says, almost too quiet to hear.

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing, nothing. Have good holidays, hmm?”

“You too,” Aubrey says, even though he doubts Alfie will. “At least he wrote thirty-eight other plays, Shakespeare,” he adds after a pause. It’s probably a poor consolation but it’s the best he can think of.

Alfie blinks up at him and then smiles, the softest thing.

“That he did,” he agrees and closes his eyes. “That he did.”

Aubrey doesn’t stop by _Dora Maar au Chat_ on his way back to the others because he’s been avoiding it ever since the theft, for solidarity. He hasn’t told Easy about it, which, one could argue, defeats the purpose of the whole ordeal, but he’s determined to carry on only resorting to gawking at the Picasso when strictly necessary, on lonely nights when the theses of his essays are falling apart before his eyes and when smelling the tea from his mother that he keeps in a tin under his bed doesn’t help him sleep.

It’s good practice, too. After all, starting tomorrow, he won’t see Dora Maar for months.

He lets himself listen to his friends’ bickering from behind a bookcase for a while before joining them because Dora Maar is not the only one he won’t see for quite a while.

*

Jerusalem suggested it a week before their last day of classes – stretched, smiled like something malicious come from the forest, and said, blood oath. They were out near the wall, enough trees around them that it almost, almost didn’t sound ridiculous.

“So we stay friends forever,” she said in a tone of voice people used when starting gripping speeches. “So it doesn’t all fall apart.”

Easy, grass in his hair, stared at his open hands like he’d had something there and lost it. There was no wind, the sky seemed stretched taut, and everything was listening.

“It’s only two months,” Kipp said without opening his eyes. He had a flower wreath on his head, courtesy of Regina, and was reading panegyrics, chewing on blades of grass and memorising lines to recite to girls later.

“We _have_ to,” Jerusalem said and it was a crime, the way she looked in sunlight, like someone you had to say yes to because of all the gold and conviction. “ _We have to_.”

Easy kept staring at his open hands and Aubrey wished he would stop.

*

He’s the last one out of their room, tasked with making sure no one’s left a stray sock under their bed and that none of the bedside lamps are plugged in. By the time he’s done disposing of all the candy wrappers he’s found all over Kipp’s side of the room, the corridors are fairly deserted, everyone clustered in front of the school in wait for the buses, the noise drifting in through the open windows. Aubrey walks briskly but takes the time to stop by all the paintings and sculptures anyway, a goodbye of a sort where he’s too embarrassed to say it even with no one watching and just silently stares at them instead.

“I hope someone dusts you off over the holidays,” he whispers to _The Blue Rider_ and rushes down the corridor, suitcase in hand. Right when he’s about to round a corner, he hears raised voices, and only stops because – well, people.

“Now, Ember, you simply can’t blame this on me. You’re the one who refused to get the police involved and, frankly, this is what you get for hanging expensive paintings all over the place anyway. This isn’t a museum, alright? You’re supposed to educate kids here, not—”

“Oh, shut it! It’d be easier to take you seriously if you stopped smirking for one second! Don’t you pretend this isn’t _exactly_ what you wanted!”

December Graham, Aubrey recognises.

“Not what I wanted, no,” the man she’s arguing with says. He sounds amused and condescending, and Aubrey’s not one for hasty judgement but dislikes the man on the spot anyway. “Just what I _expected_.”

“If I start expecting you to die of kidney failure, will it happen?” December Graham says, half ice, half sweet.

“Well, I wouldn’t put it past you to try and poison me, though I suppose you’d have to start cooking for me first—”

“Over my dead body! Anyway, like I said, next year, three—”

“ _No_ ,” the man says, voice lower and no longer amused, all threat. “One orphan per year, that was the deal.”

“ _Yes_ ,” December Graham argues, because of course she does. Aubrey takes a few quiet steps backwards. “I don’t mind selling a few more—"

“Listen here—”

Aubrey makes sure to walk loud enough for his steps to echo, and rounds the corner. The man lets go of December Graham’s wrist when he spots him over her shoulder and then scowls. December Graham follows his gaze and by the time Aubrey glances at the man again, he’s smiling, polite but in a distant way, like a politician telling lies in front of a camera.

“Aubrey,” December Graham says and the smile she gives him is almost grateful. He can’t stand it and looks away. “Aren’t you going to be late for the last bus?”

“Ten minutes,” he mumbles without having to glance at his watch.

The man is tall but not too tall, slim but not too slim, broad-shouldered but not too broad-shouldered. He looks like he could host the weather broadcast section of the morning news – his hair is combed back neatly and Aubrey can easily imagine him pointing to the certain shires with a winning smile and speaking about the chances of rainfall. He can smell the man’s cologne even from five feet away and wishes he couldn’t because his father uses the same brand.

“Well, meet my husband, I suppose,” December Graham says, nonchalant, and it reminds Aubrey of his mother so much that he has to fist his hands and thank God the sleeves of his blazer are too long. He’s going to see her soon but he’ll see his father too and— “His name is Malcolm because his parents didn’t love him, and no wonder.”

“Hello, sir,” Aubrey says, as polite as he can, and thinks that the world belongs to men like Malcolm Graham: clean-shaven, with polished shoes expensive enough that something must have died for them to be made, all charming smile and fingers smooth like they haven’t worked a day but strong enough to squeeze when necessary. He remembers the man from newspaper photos, the proprietary arm circling December Graham, less support and more bind.

“Aubrey is one of our brightest students,” December Graham says, watching him carefully. “Straight As.”

“From a good family, I bet,” the husband says, smiling at Aubrey, and Aubrey wishes he had turned back and taken the staff staircase in the corner of the building instead of walking into the middle of whatever this is.

“It’s too early in the morning for gambling, dear,” December Graham chirps without sparing her husband a glance, voice dripping honey.

“It’s never too early,” the man drawls, smiling at the back of her head, “when you know how to gamble.”

“Anyhow, Aubrey,” December Graham says, and her smile is such a fierce thing that Aubrey wonders if she’s biting the inside of her mouth to blood. “Run along lest you’re late after all and kiss little Ezra from me, would you? I didn’t manage to catch him to say goodbye, what with my significant other here out of the blue.”

Aubrey nods, mumbles something about happy holidays, and rushes off, choking on the stink of cologne that smells just like his father’s and reminding himself that what December said about Easy was just a figure of speech.

*

“How do you do that?” Easy asked, and he sounded skeptical, not hopeful. Not hopeful. “How do you make something forever?”

“We cut our hands open and shake on it,” Jerusalem said with a careless shrug. Easy was still staring at his open hands and Aubrey wanted to put something there so they wouldn’t be empty, but had nothing to give.

“No, no, no, never!” Quickly screeched and scrambled backward with horror, like he expected Jerusalem to whip out a knife then and there. “Think of the _diseases_!”

“How would it work anyway?” Kipp mused. “Everyone shakes with everyone? That’s a little confusing.”

“I think it’s a terrible idea,” Aubrey volunteered, not that anyone had asked. He wanted to tell Easy, you will have something in your hands, it doesn’t have to be blood.

“We don’t need an oath,” Regina said and crawled towards Jerusalem. “You won’t let this fall apart, and I won’t either.”

Jerusalem scowled. “It’s what you do when you have friends,” she complained. “You lot won’t murder anyone with me either! The least you could do—”

“ _Murder_?” Quickly sputtered.

“Jerry,” Regina said, taking Jerusalem’s face between her hands, and the trees were quiet, and the trees were singing, and soon, Aubrey’s father would be dead wood— “You had me memorise your home number, remember? You had us all memorise it.”

“Well,” Jerusalem mumbled, shoulders slumping. She pouted, discontent. “You might have it memorised but so what? Aubrey doesn’t like talking on the phone, you don’t like talking at all, Kipp is too stupid to use a phone properly, Quickly is probably scared of phones, and I bet there aren’t any at Easy’s orphan shack—”

Regina gently shoved the hem of her jumper sleeve between Jerusalem’s lips.

“No blood oath,” she said firmly and waited until Jerusalem slumped against her, resigned.

Easy curled his hands around nothing and above them, the sky seemed to disapprove.

*

Once on the platform, Easy waves Regina’s handkerchief.

“Farewell Duchalba, farewell Aubrey’s post-werewolf-attack girlfriend, farewell sculptures with your genitalia hanging out for all the world to see,” he says, flat.

“You’re waving the handkerchief in the wrong direction,” Quickly points out. “The school is over there.”

He moves Easy’s arm and Easy sighs and drops the handkerchief. They said goodbye to Kipp and Jerusalem half an hour ago and now they’re waiting for the train, barricaded by their luggage.

“There’s our transport,” Quickly says at the far-off sound of wheels on tracks.

“There’s trouble,” Regina says as Lavinia Pye pushes her way through the crowd towards where they’re standing. “I was just looking for you,” she announces once Lavinia reaches them. Lavinia both scowls and reddens, dressed in clothes that look like they must have cost hundreds of pounds, all silk. She’s had it rough the past two months, people calling “Lavinia Pee” after her in the corridors, and she’s been making up for what she’s lost in terms of social standing with writing and rewriting all their assignments until her grades were almost as good as Aubrey's own. They spent many a night poring over thick tomes at neighbouring library tables and, after a few weeks, they reached an unspoken agreement where whenever one of them would get up to get a tea refill, they would collect the other’s mug too. 

“Bloody Mary,” Lavinia acknowledges, though it lacks the usual bite. “You were not looking for me. You were just standing there— here.”

“Well,” Regina says with an amused smile. “I was about to.”

“You _were_?” Quickly squeaks, incredulous.

Lavinia makes a strangled noise and stares everywhere but at Regina. Everywhere, for better or for worse, happens to include Easy. “Are you going back to the orphan place?”

“Yes, back to the orphanage,” Easy says, suspiciously level, and then, “You duct-tape-licker.”

Lavinia smiles, of all things. “I might write you a letter, Aubrey Allen,” she says without looking away from Easy. “You better write me back.”

“You won’t write me a letter,” Aubrey says after a moment’s thought.

Lavinia’s smile widens. “You’re right,” she admits. “Not worth the stationery.”

The train is getting closer and closer and Quickly mumbles something and moves away from the edge of the platform, cradling his backpack to his chest.

“Lavinia,” Regina says with a patient smile as Lavinia starts turning away. “Can you stop ignoring me for a moment?”

Lavinia scowls and sputters, but stays.

“Here,” Regina says, rummaging in her bag. “I made this for you.”

She offers Lavinia the pink-and-red scarf she’s been knitting for the past few days, and Aubrey realizes exactly how lovely it is, all hearts and autumn leaves stitched into the wool with the kind of attention to detail that fully explains the peeling skin on the tips of Regina's fingers. Lavinia stares at the gift with a mixture of horror and wonder, like it’s a crying new-born, and Aubrey bites the inside of his lip so hard it hurts, willing Lavinia not to laugh.

“You made this,” Lavinia echoes, “for me.”

Regina nods and Lavinia stares at her but doesn’t reach for the scarf, still pooled in Regina’s outstretched hands.

“It’s June,” she says, her frown deeper than ever but different somehow, more confusion and less discontent. Around them, people are rushing towards the train but the five of them stay still. “It’s too warm for scarves.”

“Listen here—” Easy starts, furious, but Quickly slaps a hand over his mouth and coos at him, trying to shush him.

“You can wear it come autumn,” Regina says easily. “You can not wear it, too.”

Lavinia stares at her and stares at her and stares at her and then scowls.

“Oh, sod off!” she says, reaching for the scarf. “I’m not waiting till autumn!”

She starts clumsily winding the scarf around her neck and by the time she's run out of wool, it covers her mouth and her nose, too, only her eyes visible, strangely wet and all anger. What can be seen of her face is almost as red as the gift itself.

“SeeyouinSeptemberandAHappyNewYear,” she mumbles and then she’s off, swallowed by the crowd and only the occasional blink of red betraying how fast she’s running away.

“What _was that_ ,” Easy demands after spitting in Quickly’s hand (“Ew, are you even serious, there’s no _soap_ on these trains!”).

Regina shrugs, staring after Lavinia. “She’s had a bad year, wouldn’t you say?”

“She kind of deserved it,” Quickly points out, furiously wiping Easy’s spit off on Aubrey’s sleeve. Aubrey sighs and lets him.

Regina smiles and picks up her suitcase. “You don’t want to miss the train, do you?” she says, and it’s decisive enough that Aubrey knows none of them will mention Lavinia again for the reminder of the journey. 

*

“There’s always spit oaths,” Kipp suggested merrily, which almost sent Quickly into cardiac arrest.

They all stared at the school building through the trees, all old stone and barely-met expectations.

“It’s too nice a day for blood,” Regina said, and that was that.

At Aubrey’s side, Easy looked like he didn’t think the day was nice at all.

*

Somehow, they manage to find a whole compartment for the four of them to share, no other students insisting they had to seat there, and could you please move? Quickly takes a window seat, settles down cross-legged, closes his eyes, folds his hands together as if in prayer, and smiles beatifically.

“I’ll try sleeping,” he announces. “Don’t wake me up if the train derails.”

“ _Sleep_?” Easy says, incredulous. “Inside this _blender_?”

“You did sleep last time,” Regina points out. “You drooled all over—”

“Shut up, shut up, shut _up_ , I don’t have to listen to this, this is religious persecution—”

“I thought you weren’t religious,” Quickly says, cracking an eye open.

“I’m _not_ ,” Easy fires back and then rolls into an angry ball. Three stops later, he’s asleep, slumped against Aubrey’s shoulder and mumbling something about Chagall and dandelions every now and then.

That or sea chanties and dead lions, anyway.

“ _Unbelievable_ ,” Quickly moans. “He’s the one who was complaining, and he’s out like a light! Can someone punch me so I black out and get some sleep, too? I mean, don’t _actually_ punch me, I’d get a brain tumour knowing my luck—”

“No one’s punching you,” Regina assures him. “Try counting sheep.”

Quickly stares out the window, craning his neck. “There are no sheep out there, only cows.”

Regina smiles, fond. “Cows, then.”

Five minutes later, he’s asleep too.

Regina smiles at Aubrey and Aubrey smiles back, puts away his copy of _Marie: A Novel About the Life of Madame Tussaud_. It’s their last day together, after all.

“He said they don’t have a library at the orphanage,” Regina half-whispers, nodding at Easy, who mumbles something about angels or shower gels. “Only two shelves of books, no more.”

Right. Easy’s quest to be too smart for people to pick on him.

“I can send him books,” Aubrey says. His throat feels dry.

“Can you?” Regina asks, tilting her head. She’s too smart, she knows too much, she knows _everything_. “But what if he doesn’t want your books?”

That last bit is only a dramatic narration of what she’s guessed Aubrey is thinking, but hurts anyway. “I can send _you_ books,” Aubrey corrects, “and you can send them to him.”

Regina gives him a sad smile. “I’ll miss you, Aubrey Allen,” she says softly, “and I’m not in the habit of missing people.”

“I’ll— me, too.”

They spend the remainder of the train ride solving crossword puzzles that Aubrey took with him for the journey, words like cadaver, slapstick, and ideocratic. Outside the window, the countryside flies by too fast and, against Aubrey’s side, Easy’s breathing is too slow, but for a while, somehow, everything is alright in the world anyway.

Once they pull into the station in London, Quickly jerks awake and spies his parents in the crowd right away.

“See you in September!” he says after Aubrey gets his luggage off the shelf for him. “Don’t get polio!”

Aubrey starts gathering his things, late, kids already piling out of the train and rushing past outside their compartment. He stayed still too long, until Easy jerked awake, for fear of disturbing his sleep even though once here, he should have disturbed it. Now, he shoves pens into his pockets and watches as Easy sluggishly attempts to tie his shoelaces.

“I’m off, too,” Regina says and kisses Aubrey on the cheek. Easy gets one on the forehead and, sleep-addled, he smiles at her instead of scowling. Once it’s just the two of them he climbs the seats instead of asking Aubrey for help and struggles to get his luggage down. It’s only the one threadbare bag but it’s caught onto something and won’t be freed no matter how ferociously Easy wrestles with it.

“Maybe you should—”

Easy gives the strap one last tug and the bag jerks free, the momentum sending it flying and causing Easy to flail. He starts falling and twists, trying to catch himself on something. Aubrey fumbles and reaches out to hold him up except their limbs don’t quite align the way they should and Easy scrambles at Aubrey’s arms, Aubrey’s front teeth colliding with his forehead.

“Jesus, I’m sor— Easy? There’s— _Ezra_.”

Easy still has one foot up on the seats, hands scrambling at Aubrey’s shoulders, and he stares at Aubrey, dazed, a small wound smack in the middle of his forehead.

It feels like the train is moving even though it can’t be, not yet.

“You’re _bleeding_.”

“You bit me,” Easy points out calmly.

“I didn’t _bite_ you,” Aubrey protests, letting his hands flutter near Easy’s forehead but not letting them settle. “I just— hit you with my teeth, I suppose.”

“You hit me with your teeth,” Easy repeats with a smile and presses his thumb to the cut. The tip of it comes off bloody and Easy considers it with a frown, then licks the red off. Up close, his eyes are big and searching, all soul and that bourbon colour Aubrey always remembers but always forget, too – forever a shock when he sees it. He gets it now, why he’d thought of Wilde’s preface that first time, the same train but a different compartment, Easy staring at him over his shoulder.

Easy, Aubrey thinks, should be painted or maybe already has been.

“You need medical attention,” he says weakly and Easy laughs, a rare sound.

“I think I’ll live, _Francis_ ,” he teases and then taps Aubrey’s hand where the bitemark he left there has faded to a pale scar. “I suppose it was your payback.”

“ _No_ —”

“Aubrey,” Easy says, and he addresses Aubrey by his name so rarely that Aubrey shuts up right away. “May Picasso be with you.”

He salutes with a small smile, and then he’s off too, to search for whoever came from the orphanage to collect him, newsboy cap askew and the red bite like a brand on his forehead.

Blood oath, Aubrey thinks, and smiles at how he’s only imagining that the bitemark at the base of his thumb hurts.

Once outside, he stares up at the sky too blue for someone to live there and prays at it anyway. He pretends that the wrinkle in the blue is an incoming storm and not scorn and thinks, as loud as he can, _please_.

_Please, let it be forever._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Marie: A Novel About The Life Of Madame Tussaud by Dorrit Willumset is a lesser known book that I only read because it was assigned reading for a course I never finished but if you're a history nerd and crave some beautiful writing, I 100% recommend. It's a wonder! 
> 
> Also.................. the amount of instances of people accidentally and not-accidentally biting each other to blood/not to blood that this story will have is a new record even for me and I should probably be ashamed of myself. I blame it on 10-year-old me's Twilight obsession, tbh


	20. dearest, dear, hello -- interlude, autumn 2004

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a never sent letter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> voilà, your first real taste of the angst to come. very very short, too short to deserve either a quote or a painting 
> 
> ALSO! I totally lied because two more chapters for year 1 after this one after all! I just can't be trusted ever. At least I lied to myself, too :,)

_~~Dearest~~ _

_~~Dear~~ _

_~~Hello~~ _

_~~Hi~~ _

_~~Good morning, unless it’s not morning for you, in which case~~ _

_~~Hi~~ _

_~~Hello~~ _

_~~Dear~~ _

_~~Dearest~~ _

_Okay, so I made you a promise, and then I broke it. I know. I know. I made you a promise, and then I broke it, and now here we are, or, well, aren’t. I’m different and I’m sure you are too. Are too. I’m less verbose now, for one, because, see, there are words I’ve just given up on. I mean, there are words that I just can’t stand anymore, and there’s a me that I can’t stand anymore, and besides, I can’t be trusted to get the simplest words right so, in a way, I shouldn’t stake a claim to the difficult ones either._

_~~Sometimes~~ _

_~~It’s like this~~ _

_~~Look~~ _

_~~Where~~ _

_~~I guess looking out the window was always lonely but now half the time I can’t stand it and half the time I can’t stand anything else~~ _

_~~Alright~~ _

_One word I got all wrong is one you actually caught me reading up on years ago. I was pretty mortified at the time, in case you couldn’t tell. But you probably could. Tell._

_(I got ‘art’ wrong too but the word I’m talking about here is four letters long.)_

_(I got everything wrong, didn’t I. Didn’t I? Maybe I didn’t, no way of telling now, but that’s what it feels like anyway.)_

_Sorry about the stain. It’s tea, not, I don’t know, beer. I hate beer. I don’t drink beer. ~~I don’t drink alcohol at all even though sometimes I wish I did.~~_

_Maybe I should start over except I’m not sending this anyway because I wouldn’t know where to send it to and I’m sure you wouldn’t want to read it anyway, tea stains or not._ _And if I’m not sending it (look at me starting sentences with ‘and,’ ha) then maybe I should be honest and tell you everything but I can’t because it hurts and. And hurts. And I still don’t even_

_Alright. Okay. So remember that time you found me in the library and I didn’t hear you until you were at my shoulder because I could never hear you (at some point you became the quietest thing in the world, I swear)? You didn’t mention it, but I knew that you could see it, how I had the dictionary open on the word ‘love.’_

_Well, a fat lot of good that did me when, in the end, somehow I still got it wrong. A standard definition and I still got it wrong._

_~~In my defense, I think the Cambridge Dictionary of English got it wrong, too.~~ _

_~~Alright, it’s no excuse but at least I know now. I know now and it’s a bit late for that but, I, I know now. And it hurts. And hurts. And I just wish~~ _

_Anyway. Wherever you are, I hope you’re a lot of small words that mean happy things._

_~~Please wear a scarf~~ _

_~~With lo~~ _

_Right. Right. I’ll just, I’ll stop now. This isn’t really, I mean, I’ll just st God what am I even DOING_

_Just, wherever you are, I hope you’re okay.  
_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, it's pretty obvious who's the author of this letter but I'm not saying the name anyway. I mean, it really is obvious but the Lemony Snicket in my mind is whispering, shut up shut up 
> 
> Also it makes a bunch of other stuff sort of obvious, I guess, but I'm really bad at withholding information so there you go 
> 
> AND! The dates are super important
> 
> (At some point I'll start drawing and posting timelines but for now it shall remain confusing)


	21. a summer runaway, july 1999

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ~~wherein Aubrey pines~~
> 
> in which no one knows anything about the British wildlife

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be much longer but alas, I hate writing Aubrey's father, so. Anyway, one more chapter about Sparrow for this section and onto year 2, this time I 100% promise

David Hockney, _May Blossom on the Roman Road_

*

I remember my childhood as a long wish to be elsewhere.

~Louise Glück, _Unpainted Door_

*

He gets tired of being at home after a month and the days soon become the circles the hands of the clock make. There’s meat for dinner every day and guests over every weekend, and Aubrey’s father asks him questions without looking at him. Aubrey always answers and dreads the day the reply he gives will be wrong – then, he knows, he’ll have his father’s eyes upon him at last, the final judgement.

There’s a window seat in the hall upstairs, green fields outside it like a freshly ironed quilt, and Aubrey reads his way through the French classics, Zola, Flaubert, Proust, Sand, and the occasional indulgence of a Verne novel in between. He uses his friends’ letters as bookmarks, letting himself reread them every now and then, smiling at Jerusalem’s stories of jumping into ponds and cycling into a river at full speed, cringing at Quickly’s detailed descriptions of how much it hurt when he stepped on a nail and how there was blood and pus and stitches, and rolling his eyes at Kipp’s assurances that his mother lets him drink fancy wine every midday, she does, Aubrey, I swear, friend.

Regina has sent him a handkerchief with an attempt at Picasso’s _The Dream_ stitched into the fabric, thoughtful enough that he doesn’t dare use it for fear the colours will fade, and Easy has sent him nothing.

“Sure he writes me,” Jerusalem told him the one time she caught him on the phone. “He sends me threats, all mismatched newspaper letters, asking for ransom. I’m mostly sure it’s a joke.”

Aubrey has forgotten what it’s like at home, too many rooms, not enough people to fill them, quiet but not the good sort, his mother’s thoughtful silences and his father’s foreboding ones, Wilgefortis unmentioned, forever the elephant in the room. It’s strange to miss it already and miss it for reasons that aren’t all art-related, too, but Aubrey can’t help but think about it and keeps counting the remaining weeks of summer away. The reason why his father won’t mention Wilgefortis, Aubrey knows, is because Aubrey still hasn’t proven it worth mentioning. It was a gamble of a sort for his father, letting him go there rather than to St. Nectan’s, and he’s yet to see any fruits of that decision. If it’s a flip-of-a-coin sort of thing, then the metaphorical pound of it is still spinning, caught-midair.

“You like it there,” Aubrey’s mother told him when she picked him up from the train station a month before, one hand on the steering wheel. “I can tell.”

He wouldn’t like it at St. Nectan’s, not because there’s no Dora Maar there but because all the kids he’s ever been introduced to go there now. St. Nectan’s is full of people he’d be expected to befriend and people he’d be expected to avoid. He’d have to have the best grades in his year and yet avoid causing offense to the sons of his father’s colleagues by bettering them, and he’d always have to keep his back straight. Every conversation would be a test where one misstep makes you fail and he’d only be able to relax after lights-out, or maybe not even then. All-boys school, rowing teams, and social flexing, constantly being mindful of future connections and pretending that he too knows how to ride a horse and hasn’t fallen off a mere foal three times in a span of two minutes the one summer he tried it.

Sometimes, when he rereads the letters, Aubrey’s hands shake with how badly he wants to keep them.

He’s in the middle of selecting books he thinks Easy would like that he might or might not end up sending him in a parcel ( _The Hound of the Baskervilles_ , maybe, _We Have Always Lived in the Castle_ , definitely, _The Mystery of Edwin Drood_ , which will make him throw things, surely, _The Island of Doctor Moreau_ , perhaps, and, after some deliberation, _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ ) when he hears his mother’s voice carry upstairs. At first, he thinks she’s upset and can’t move from the floor of his bedroom, but then he recognizes his name.

“Someone on the phone for you, Aubrey,” she explains when he leans over the stairs’ balustrade. He rushes downstairs to grab the handset from her, taking a moment to calm his breath before mumbling a hello.

“Aubrey Allen,” says December Graham. “How are you?”

Aubrey winds the phone cord around his wrist in an attempt at grounding himself.

“I’m fine, thank you,” he says, and is grateful when she doesn’t give him the chance to ask what it is she’s calling about because he can’t for the life of him think of a way of doing it that wouldn’t seem rude.

“I’m calling about little Ezra, see,” she explains unprompted and sounds far less amused than she normally does when she mentions Easy. “I suppose I could ask your mother but sometimes mothers don’t know everything they should, hmmm?”

“Sorry,” Aubrey says, and breathes, breathes, breathes. It’s summer, everything is green, there are bees everywhere, and the air is – has been – the sort of thick that means either nothing at all or something bad. Aubrey has been hoping for the former. “What about Ezra?”

“It appears he’s run away,” December tells him with a sigh. “The orphanage contacted me this morning and we’ve been trying to locate him since, so far to no avail.”

“He’s not here,” Aubrey says, voice too croaky. He hopes his father can’t hear from his study. “Have you called the others? I mean, other students, like—”

“I thought I’d check with you first, for obvious reasons,” December Graham interrupts, and Aubrey’s head is buzzing too much for him to demand to know what those could be. “Not hiding him under your bed, then?”

“I’m sorry, what do you mean he’s run away?” Aubrey says, gripping the phone so tight that the plastic creaks. “How do you know he hasn’t been, well—”

“Abducted?” December Graham guesses, voice silky. “He’s left a note. Do you want me to read it to you?”

Aubrey nods and then tries to say yes when he realises she can’t see him, but his throat is far too dry for that. December Graham hums in acknowledgment and clears her throat anyway.

“ _To whom it may concern, even though it’s nobody’s business_ ,” she reads and manages to sound amused despite the circumstances, “ _I have chosen to leave this shithole through that one ground floor window that never locks all the way. Good riddance, right? Till never, Ezra Weiss._ ”

“Jesus,” Aubrey breathes.

“Indeed,” December Graham agrees. “There’s a search party and all. Any idea where the kid might be heading if he’s not at yours?”

“C-call the others,” Aubrey says, flexing his fingers around the phone. “Why doesn’t the window lock all the way?”

“It’s an underfunded orphanage,” December Graham explains patiently. “Besides, it’s Ezra, I’m sure a properly locked window wouldn’t stop him.”

“No,” Aubrey agrees with a sigh. “It wouldn’t.”

“Well, if he’s not with you, I better start calling the others,” December Graham says, decisive, then goes quiet for a moment. “I’ll keep you updated, if you’d like.”

“Please.”

“Well, then. Take care, Aubrey.”

She hangs up and it takes Aubrey a minute to stop holding the phone to his ear. Back in his room, he ignores his mother’s distant calls and stares at the carefully chosen books. He decides he should add _Robinson Crusoe_ to the pile and stifles a hysterical laugh.

*

Things Aubrey learns happen when someone disappears:

One has to sit on one’s hands to keep oneself from going for the door and trying to comb through the English countryside one square mile at a time.

One can’t help but recall every conversation one has ever had with the escapee in search of clues to his possible location.

One jumps at every sound.

One stares at the phone like it’ll disappear once one blinks.

One cycles to the town centre once one can’t sit still a minute longer and one buys three books on Chagall with one’s school stationery money.

One bites one’s fingernails to blood.

One does not scream. One does not make a sound. One is mouse-quiet.

One _does not scream_.

*

“I can’t believe him!” Jerusalem yells, and Aubrey puts his forehead to the wall and wonders if, by talking to her, he’ll miss a phone call about Easy. “Can you _believe_ him?!”

“No,” Aubrey says quietly. “No, I can’t believe him.”

He thinks they mean two different things, him and Jerusalem. Jerusalem only can’t believe that Easy would run away, and Aubrey can’t believe that Easy, Easy, Easy.

Easy is the only person besides himself that’s ever made him wonder, _but do you really exist?_

“What if bears eat him or something?!” Jerusalem rages, the phone crackling almost merrily, like it’s laughing at them. Aubrey is not violent enough to thump it quiet but he does shoot it a stern look.

“We’re in England, Jerry,” he says patiently, blinking at the flowery wallpaper in the hall. His father, he remembers suddenly, hates it.

“Wolves, then,” Jerusalem says.

Aubrey whines. “ _Don’t._ ”

Later, after she’s said that she can't believe Easy three more times, Aubrey spreads a map of England on the floor of his bedroom and traces routes with his pencil, resolutely not thinking about wolves.

*

“Something will eat him, I’m telling you! Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, he will probably call boars names until they start chasing him and he has strong lungs, sure, but his legs aren’t that long and—”

“ _Quickly_ —”

“He’ll probably drink lake water and he’ll _die_ , Aubrey, because they _always_ die—”

*

“Do you think he’ll be famous? Maybe he’ll live in the woods now, like that, what’s his name, Mowgli guy! Or Sancho Panza!”

“Kipp, for God’s sake—”

“No wait, I meant Robin Hood—”

“How do you mistake Sancho Panza for Robin Hood?!”

“He did always seem like an untamed raccoon, though, Easy did, so it might be for the better. I mean, when nature calls—”

*

“…And I know that there are no bears in England but what about _wolves_? We still have _wolves_! Boars, too! And raccoons!”

“Actually, I don’t think we have any of those here, Aubrey—”

“No, Regina, you don’t understand, it’s not about the animals, it’s about the _everything_!”

*

He knows that there are no wolves in England. He _knows_.

*

Dinner is a miserable affair, cutlery clicking and silence stretched uncomfortable between the three of them, taking up not one but all of the empty seats around the far-too-big table.

“So who is it that went missing?” Aubrey’s father asks, almost casual, except Aubrey knows better and recognises it as dismissive. He chews slowly, to give himself time. He doesn’t want to tell his father about Easy. He thinks that telling him so much as Easy’s name would be disastrous somehow, like a bad spell, like Easy could be trapped that way.

He doesn’t believe in those things, and yet.

His mother must notice something in his expression – and Aubrey will have to work on that – because she deliberately knocks her glass of wine over, red staining the tablecloth and a rush to get the dishes off the table.

Aubrey doesn’t understand her. His wonderful mother, who won’t let her male friends so much as touch her rifle but apologises three times for spilling something, flashing Aubrey’s father a sheepish smile.

Later, Aubrey knocks twice on the door to her room, a quiet thank you.

*

“I’ve found him,” December Graham announces over the phone late that night, and Aubrey’s lungs open around air.

He breathes, then breathes some more.

“Where— Why— How is he?”

Somehow, he can hear the smile in her voice.

“In some pub in the middle of nowhere, slurping soup he’s been given for free because, quote, ‘he looks underfed like a calf dying on the side of the road,’ unquote. As to _why_ , your guess is as good as mine. I can ask if he wants to talk to you, if you’d like?”

Aubrey nods, remembers, croaks a yes. It takes two minutes of distant shuffling and he counts to a hundred while waiting.

Somewhere, his father’s newspaper rustles.

“What?” says Easy.

“Did you know there are no wolves in England?” Aubrey mumbles, stupidly.

“We have bears, though,” Easy says, and Aubrey knows better than to correct him. “I can’t believe she found me. Stupid muppet.”

“Why would you run away?” Aubrey asks, hopeless. It’s none of his business, but—

“You don’t like talking on the phone,” Easy says quietly, almost with wonder, like he’s just realised. It’s strange to hear his voice but not see his face and Aubrey pictures it, halfway to angry and far too pale.

“No,” he admits. “I don’t.”

“I don’t get how they didn’t figure out where I was going,” Easy says. “I’ve spent the whole month telling them I wanted to see him!”

“See who?”

“Lou!” Easy says like it should be obvious, and Aubrey remembers, _Anyway, how is Lou?_ “Louis.”

“The boy you were writing all those letters,” Aubrey guesses. He expects Easy to insist that he was writing his letters to a mouse, he _was_ , but Easy only sighs instead.

“The very one,” he admits. “A friend.”

Aubrey hasn’t really considered it, Easy having friends back at the orphanage. He feels incredibly stupid. “Oh?” he prompts clumsily.

“He’s your age,” Easy goes on. “They opened a place for kids like him two months back and he was moved there before I came back from Wilgefuckthis.”

 _Wilgefuckthis_. _Really._

“Kids like him...?”

“He’s blind,” Easy explains, impatient. “The place is for kids with disabilities, etc.”

“Oh,” Aubrey says, feeling increasingly stupid. He tugs at the phone cord and half-hopes it will somehow break the connection. “That’s good, though, isn’t it? I mean, the place, not that he’s, um.”

“Yes,” Easy agrees. “I want to see him.”

Wants to see him enough to make a fuss and enough to run away and brave, well, not wolves, but angry squirrels — Enough to _run away_.

“I think December Graham would take you if you asked,” Aubrey tells him, and he means it, too.

“I figured,” Easy says. “I _will_ ask. She got me crayons, you know, and paints, and notebooks.”

“That’s… nice.”

Aubrey holds onto the phone and thinks of how strange it is to hear somebody’s voice so close to his ear when they’re so far away. He knows how it works, he’s read all about it when he was, what, eight, nine, but it’s still… It’s still.

“You sound constipated,” Easy says, curious, and Aubrey smiles at the word. “Is it because you’re on the phone?”

Aubrey sighs. “Yes,” he lies. “That’s why.”

“Should I hang up, then?”

“No, no, I— I could, er, send you some books, if you’d like,” he offers, the words too rushed.

“How charitable,” Easy laughs. _Laughs._ Christ.

“No,” Aubrey insists. “I’m not— I _want_ someone to read them. Someone should, anyway, and the others won’t.”

“Oh Jesus,” Easy whines. “Are you going to send me long, boring letters about why you love them once I do read them?”

“I haven’t sent you any long, boring letters yet, have I?” Aubrey says, more impatiently than he’d like.

“No,” Easy says quietly. “You haven’t.”

“Good luck with December,” Aubrey mumbles because he’s— tired. It’s hard to think of things to say that aren’t childish demands to know what this Louis is like, to be worth trekking through the countryside.

“Aye, aye!” Easy says, mocking. “Send some chocolate along with the books!”

“Will do,” Aubrey agrees and even manages a smile, wasted on the ugly flower tapestry as it is. “Don’t run away anymore.”

“I’ll try,” Easy promises dramatically, and then hangs up. This time, Aubrey doesn’t wait to put the phone away. He walks to his room instead, feeling drained.

He thinks that he could easily sleep forever now.

Once he gets there, there’s an even stack of law articles on his bed that makes his heart skip a beat – ridiculous, it’s not a threat, it _isn’t_ – and he knows that he’ll be expected to discuss them at breakfast.

When he blinks, spots dance under his eyelids like dying embers, but it’s fine because he won’t get to close his eyes for quite a while anyhow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Louis won't be oficially introduced for quite a while but, eventually, he'll be a very important character and I love him 
> 
> I myself haven't read Zola, Flaubert or Sand but I'll soon have to for my semester in France :,) 
> 
> ALSO the British are awful (sorry if you're, you know, British) they hunted so much that they literally have no bears, no boars, no wolves, no nothing. Here in Poland, you can't go for a walk if you live anywhere near a forest without getting chased by a boar. Actually, forget the forest, you're walking between blocks in the city center, you're still likely to meet one.


	22. a sealed deal, a sold soul -- interlude, winter 2005

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I told you that it was _the one thing I wouldn’t do_ —”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, so this is it. I mean, obviously not, since I'm already writing the next chapter, but part one's done at last. I'm not going to get too sappy because this story is still closer to its beginning than anything else but I will get a little sappy because, well :,) So, Thank you for all the comments!!! (god, all the wonderful comments that made me the happiest <333 They all mean the world!) and thank you for the kudos, but, most of all, simply thank you for giving this story a chance and reading it! I wouldn't be posting it if it weren't for you guys because what's the point? I love you all!!! And this will be abominably long and will have so much angst but I promise you, a long long time from now, I will write so many gratuitous scenes to make up for it! There will be fluff! ...Eventually! I hope! 
> 
> Okay, I'll shut up and let you read about Sparrow being very angsty

René Magritte, _Memory of a Journey_

*

The trees you planted in childhood have grown

too heavy

~Rainer Maria Rilke

*

“Lei,” Sparrow says, nudging the ladle stuck in a huge pot they dug out of somebody’s trash a week before. “I think you’re supposed to peel potatoes before putting them in soup.”

“Be happy you get to eat potatoes at all!” Lei chirps merrily, adding far too much salt to the dish. “You could be a poor Irishman during the Great Famine.”

“Right,” Sparrow says and knocks Lei’s hand away with the ladle. “That’s enough seasoning, I think.”

“I washed the potatoes before putting them in, so it’s all good,” Lei assures and then shoves Sparrow away. “And I mean it, be happy. It’s _food_.”

It’s not just the food. It’s the roof over their heads, it’s the windows, thin but there, and it’s the central heating. They both take short, lukewarm showers for fear of high bills, but at least there’s running water. It’s been weeks and Sparrow has seen dozens of spiders but no cockroaches.

“January is going to spoil you with wine and lobster and you’ll forget all about potatoes,” he says, crowding close. He could put his chin on Lei’s shoulder if he leaned two inches forward and he’s almost tempted to – a brief pause in the forever of no-touch, an easing into a simpler friendship like one would into a coat – but he keeps himself still.

Touch, he’s long come to understand, is like churches. He can visit sometimes, he can appreciate the architecture, but it’s not for him, he’ll never kneel to it, and he can’t take any of the figurines dripping gold for himself either.

“Don’t hover,” Lei scolds. “It’s shy.”

“The _soup_ is shy?”

“It was boiling before you came here, and now it’s down to a simmer,” Lei insists.

Sparrow sighs and crosses the room to stretch on the floor, ignoring the lumpy mattress they’re supposed to be sharing but rarely do. He doesn’t feel comfortable sleeping next to someone – and what an irony, that – and has gotten used to drifting off on top of their piled clothes instead on the rare nights they both get to sleep through.

Lei starts humming something, probably one of his sea shanties, lines drawled long into something miserable rather than rowdy, almost a howl, and Sparrow busies himself with examining the tiny angel figurines lined up on the floor like a domino row begging for a nudge. Lei has been carving them out of bones dug out of people’s trash for years, and though he insists he would only ever take the cleaner ones and wash them properly, Sparrow still can’t forget that they’d been in somebody’s mouth, these small wonders, that someone had been chewing around them once. The first time Lei showed him one, a tiny thing smaller than a chess piece, he smiled and told Sparrow that he had no idea how much meat rich people would leave stuck to pork ribs. Sparrow smiled back and told him that he did have some idea, actually.

(“You know, Rodin?” Lei said once with a wry smile. “I love him, but he’s not for the likes of me.”

It was what convinced Sparrow to stick with him.)

What Sparrow likes most about Lei’s angels is that they’re always imperfect, one-eyed, three-eyed, thirteen-eyed, a missing arm, a missing leg, a missing wing, a broken wing, no wings at all but scars on the shoulder blades.

(It’s not that deep, Lei told Sparrow once. Greek statues, yeah? They’re all in pieces, and who’s to say the sculptors didn’t make them that way?

Historians, Sparrow thought. Common sense. Still, he never said it. He figured Lei already knew.)

“Can I name the new one?” Sparrow says, poking the newest addition to the collection, an androgynous little thing with its feet pointing backwards.

“You always do anyway,” Lei replies with a sigh and Sparrow almost has the energy to smile.

Smiles, he thinks, don’t fit him too well.

“Globetrotter McPretty, then,” he decides. “They’re in love with The Shitty One.”

The Shitty One is one of Lei’s bigger angels, a rare find of a thick bone, with a beak instead of a nose and no arms.

(He doesn’t need arms, Lei insisted when presenting it to Sparrow. He doesn’t have a nose to pick, see.)

“Are you going to put them so close to each other that it’ll seem like they’re holding hands?”

“ _No_ ,” Sparrow snorts. “I’m going to put them in opposite corners of the room.”

Later, they eat the soup, potato skin and all, and Sparrow glances at the clock. Eight already, and no questions so far, Lei more quiet than usual, too busy mulling something over to pester Sparrow about anything that happened before the blind alley where they first met.

I’m a tabula rasa, Sparrow told him the first time Lei asked. It didn’t keep Lei from asking again.

(It doesn’t matter, not at all, Lei assured him once after Sparrow snapped at him. It’s just that I think it’d be easier for you.

 _What_ would?

Well, everything.)

“You know,” Lei says, staring out the window where London sprawls so grey that it seems depressingly Orwellian. Their flat is high up and Sparrow scans the rooftops, looking for cats. “Every morning, I wake and smell smoke.”

Sparrow almost voices his next thought, because he’d rather this was a transaction than Lei’s offering, since he doesn’t have a clue what to do with the latter.

_Almost._

Every morning, when Sparrow wakes, he smells wet earth.

*

“ _No_ ,” Sparrow says and moves to get up. January brings his hand up to stop him but doesn’t touch him. Sparrow doesn’t know what he’d do if January did.

“You don’t get to be picky about this,” January reminds him, half amusement, half threat. Around them, people Sparrow either was already introduced to or will be are laughing and talking about paintings that he has never seen and doesn’t care to see. For once, they’re not alone, and Sparrow thinks he could disappear here, fold himself into the crowd like a game card hidden up somebody's sleeve.

He stays where he is instead.

“I’m not being _picky_ ,” he hisses, old anger that still feels young loud inside his head, a high, metallic yowl cutting his thoughts into pieces like he's a Picasso. 

(He saw January cut a cubist painting to pieces once, all philosophical conversation and tea growing cold at his elbow as he followed the contours of geometrical shapes with the blades of plain paper scissors, smiling at the canvas with mild amusement.)

“But you _are_ , little bird,” January says, almost warm, which only makes it seem all the more cold.

“I told you that it was _the one thing I wouldn’t do_ —”

“But, but!” January interrupts, and clinks their champagne glasses together when someone glances in their direction over their shoulder. Sparrow hasn’t taken a sip of his and refuses to, on principle. “Hear me out first, how about that?”

Lei is somewhere in that crowd of champagne flutes and people dressed in hummingbird colours, arm hooked through an older woman’s last Sparrow saw him, November of the twelve months of art freaks, a _Mona Lisa_ smile but _Girl with a Pearl Earring_ lips. Sparrow could find him, and they could leave, and they could breathe the London air, all Thames, smoke, and money, and be the children of the streets again, two prodigal sons and one sleeping bag to share between them. It would be horrible and Sparrow would never get what he wants, but it would be survival, and what January is suggesting he do certainly isn’t that.

“I already _have_ ,” he snaps and looks around, searching for a flat surface to put the champagne glass away. One more minute of this and he thinks even the floor will do.

“No. No, you don’t understand,” January says, all serious now, not that he needs that to be taken, well, seriously, because just look at his tie, pure silk and a knot so perfect that it’d be a most elegant death if someone choked him with it, not that anyone would dare.

“Enlighten me, then."

“You don’t actually have to do it,” January tells him with a long-suffering sigh, and taps the photograph Sparrow is still carefully holding by the edges. “You only need to make her think you _want_ to.”

Sparrow sighs and examines the photograph. Maureen Barkley is in her forties, first wrinkles and the occasional flash of silver in her curling forever of hair. She looks like she was forced into her dress, wrapped in it like you would a cheap gift, only it’s satin and worth more than Sparrow and Lei’s flat for sure, not that they’re the ones paying for it. Her lipstick is the red of arterial blood and Sparrow could bet that she’s the sort of woman who calls everyone ‘darling’ and pretends that loud smacks are kisses.

“Isn’t that too much of a gamble?” Sparrow asks carefully, tilting the photograph so that light causes it to flash white. “There are variables you can’t account for.”

“No,” January says, all confidence, and smiles coldly. “You’d make sure that wouldn’t be the case.”

“You can’t—”

“But I _can_.”

Sparrow allows himself the brief fantasy of throwing the champagne in January’s face, and can’t imagine why no one’s ever tried it. He thinks it must be the mythology everyone’s created out of all the possible consequences, the potential repercusions standing between him and January and keeping Sparrow from doing as he pleases.

January is invincible and Sparrow feels a sort of hopeless jealousy, lack scratching at him from the inside like hunger and nothing to appease it.

“Can I think about it?” Sparrow asks, making sure not to grip the stem of his glass too tightly.

“No, you can’t,” January says, merciless, and then considers Sparrow. “You know, you’re not without charm.”

Sparrow snorts. “Are you propositioning me or something?” he mocks, even though he knows January isn’t.

“I like to think my tastes are a bit more refined than that,” January says, almost casual. “No offense.”

Sparrow stifles a hysterical laugh. “ _None taken_.”

“I know that you expected to be stealing artworks and only that,” January acknowledges, “but, see, information is often even more crucial and almost always trickier to obtain.”

Sparrow allows himself a wisp of a memory, cruel hands, cruel sounds, and cruel wood.

“I don’t actually have to do it,” he echoes, trying to relax the muscles of his throat. “I only need to make her think I _want_ to.”

January’s smile spreads too slow to be genuine, a morbid sort of delight.

“Good boy,” he praises and Sparrow half-expects him to ruffle his hair or something equally patronizing, but when January doesn’t, he remembers that they might pretend at being equal, but he’s still an accidentally useful stray, tracking dirt from the street all over January’s mahogany floors, suit or not, and it was January that gave him money for the clothes anyway.

 _Soon,_ he reminds himself. He’s in it for a painting, and he _will_ have it.

“We’ll go over the details later,” January says, dismissive. Someone refills his glass on their way past and he automatically takes a sip. “Over a game of checkers, maybe?”

“How about something a little more… hip?” Sparrow says, tilting his head. The next time someone walks past with a tray, he puts his glass away, almost causing the man to trip on January’s carpet. “Say, two truths and a lie.”

January smiles.

“Here are two truths and a lie for you, then,” he says, lowering his voice but not bothering to lean close. “You will hate me, you will love me, and you will thank me.”

“I will never love you,” Sparrow says easily.

“Well,” January drawls, smile widening. “There you go.”

“How about this,” Sparrow says and leans close, smells January’s cologne, the stink of overindulgence itself. “I already hate you, I would try and ruin you if I didn’t need you, and the champagne was lovely.”

January arches an eyebrow.

“You didn’t have any of the champagne.”

“Well,” Sparrow says, returning his smile. “ _There you go_.”

He collects Lei from the drunk crowd and leaves the suit jacket January bought him behind. He’ll either collect it in the future or not. Outside, Lei sighs, breath warm on Sparrow’s cheek, and leans against him like Sparrow’s a convenient lamppost. Sparrow stays still, trying to decide if it’s unwelcome.

“Why are you like this?” Lei whines, poking him between the ribs.

“Troubled childhood,” Sparrow replies lightly and looks up, where there’s too much pollution for stars.

“Oh,” Lei mumbles, delighted. “Did you just make a joke?”

“Oh,” Sparrow parrots, zipping Lei’s jacket for him, right up to his chin. “If only.”

Two truths and a lie:

Sparrow needs January, January needs Sparrow for what Sparrow can do, January needs Sparrow for what he is, to prove a point.

(“You know, Rodin? I love him, but he’s not for the likes of me.”

“I see.”

“You see, but do you _understand_?”

“Yeah, I do. I do understand.”)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again, please let me know what you think (criticism very welcome too!) and if you want I'm on tumblr @yoyointhegarden 
> 
> (also, the only reason why this chapter is here and not in part 2 is because i have this obsession with 3 as a number and couldn't stand the thought that there would be only 2 Sparrow chapters in part 1 and not 3. Yes, this is also the reason why Alfie had 3 chapters. if you think that's weird it's because you haven't seen me drink water only 3 sips at the time or 9 if i'm very thirsty)


End file.
